


Cross That Bridge

by Clowns_or_Midgets



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:23:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clowns_or_Midgets/pseuds/Clowns_or_Midgets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the end of Southern Comfort. Sam reveals the real reason he didn't search for Dean while he was in Purgatory.<br/>Originally a one-shot. Now developed into a short story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you are reading this for the first time, welcome to the story. If you have read it before you may notice some changes. The most obvious of this is the change to past tense from present. When I sat down to write the continuation of this story I found I couldn’t get into the present tense headspace without a lot of concentration. I prefer to let the words flow, so I changed to past tense and normal service was resumed. I hope you enjoy,

**Cross That Bridge**

 

Sam threw his bags into the trunk of the Impala and slammed it closed. His head was starting to ache, and he knew that wasn’t a good sign. A blinding pain crossed Sam's temple and he wavered on his feet. He could feel the rage building, and though he knew it wasn’t appropriate to the situation, he embraced it. He was going to use it to finally say what needed to be said.

"For the record, the girl—her name's Amelia, Amelia Richardson," he said. "She and I had a place together in Kermit, Texas.

Dean looked awkward. "Look, man, I don't even remember what I said, but, uh–“

"But what? But you didn't mean it? Oh, please. You and I both know you didn't need that penny to say those things." The anger was rising within Sam, and he tried to control it before he found himself revealing too much.

"Come on, Sam," Dean said.

"Own up to your crap, Dean. I told you from the jump where I was coming from, why I didn't look for you. But you, you had secrets. You had Benny. And you got on your high and mighty, and you've been kicking me ever since you got back. But that's over. So move on, or I will. I haven't got time for this anymore."

Sam cursed inwardly. He had said too much.

"You haven't got time for this?" Dean questioned. "Since when do you not have time for me? Or is this a part of the new Sam? No time for his family now he's got a girl?"

Sam ran a hand through his hair in frustration. His head was pounding now, and he knew he needed to take something before it spiraled out of control and he was back to lying in the dark for days. It'd been a while since he'd had one this bad.

"Well, come on, out with it," Dean prompted. "Was it the girl? Am I some big inconvenience now, back from Purgatory, getting in the way of your nice _normal_ life?"

Sam unlocked the trunk and grabbed his duffel. Turning his back on his brother, he unlocked the motel room door and stepped inside, throwing it closed behind him.

"Dammit, Sam!" Dean bellowed and rattled the closed door. "Let me in or so help me…"

"Or what?" Sam muttered. Like there was anything else Dean could do or say that could be worse than what he already knew. He’d let his brother down. He should have found a way to release Dean from Purgatory instead of lying around for days at a time. And Castiel too. What Sam wouldn't give to have Castiel here now, with his healing abilities.

"Open this damn door!" Dean ordered, slamming his fist against the wood.

Sam's head pounded in rhythm with the banging, sending scorching pain through his skull. He tossed his duffel on the bed and rooted through it, searching for the small trove of medication he had stashed inside a pair of balled up socks. He selected the right bottle and shook two pills out into his hands. He would have liked to take more, to stave off the pain faster, but he had learned his lesson in that respect. Having your stomach pumped for an overdose was not a pleasant experience.

"Sam, I'm coming in!" Dean bellowed, stepping back and preparing to kick down the door. "One… Two…"

Before he reached three, the door clicked open and Sam was illuminated by the motel room lamp.

Dean pushed past him and into the room. "Right, now you've finished hiding like a little bitch, we are going to talk about this once and for all," he said fiercely.

"Dean," Sam said in a whisper, fighting the urge to press his fingers against his temples. "Can't we do this another time?"

"Hell no we can't. We are doing this now!" Dean's anger towards his brother was growing by the second.

Sam sank down onto the edge of the bed and clasped his hands between his knees. It was taking everything he had not to moan aloud, and for once, he didn’t care that his brother was mad at him. All he cared about was the crippling pain building in his head. He didn't get the meds in time; it was going to be a bad one. He glared balefully at the lamp in the corner, wishing he could turn it off.

"I do have time for you, Dean," he said in a tired voice. "But right now, I just want to sleep."

Dean snorted. "Sure, it sounds like you've got plenty of time for me, as long as you're not sleepy, or you know, I'm not rotting in Purgatory!"

Sam raised his head slowly to look at his brother. "Is that what you really think? That I didn't come look for you because I couldn't be bothered?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I think. You had some nice apple pie life with your girl, and I screwed it all up by coming back."

Tears sprang to Sam's eyes. They were a combination of physical pain and emotional pain as he heard how low his brother opinion was of him. How had it all gone so wrong? How had they come to this?

Dean saw the tears but discounted them. Sam had no right to be upset. He was the one that caused this whole mess. He was the one that left Dean to rot in Purgatory. If anyone had a right to be upset, it was Dean.

"You're wrong," Sam said in a whisper. "You didn't screw it up by coming back. You coming back was the first thing that felt right in this whole disaster of a year."

"Doesn't seem like it to me. You honestly telling me you weren't happier without me?"

Sam groaned and fisted a handful of hair. He couldn’t help it. He was trying so hard to resist the pain, but it was coming at him full force. Dean took it as a sign of weakness in his brother, and it irritated him.

Sam knew the time that if there ever was a time to come clean, it was now. If he didn’t heal this breach between him and Dean now, it would never happen. He would lose his brother forever.

Making a supreme effort to hide his agony, he reached for his duffel.

"You running off again?" Dean said cruelly.

"No. That's what you are going to do," Sam said, knowing in his heart that was true. When Dean learned the truth, he was going to leave Sam behind. Soon, Sam wouldn’t be capable of hunting, and the hunt was all Dean cared about those days.

"You're damn right I am," Dean said. "If I don't get some answers soon, I am going to pack up my shit and leave you to it. After all, that's what you want."

With trembling fingers, Sam unrolled the socks and allowed the four medicine bottles to roll out onto the bedspread.

Dean watched them roll out and cold fear gripped his heart. "Sam?" he said quietly. "What are those?"

"Drugs," Sam said, avoiding his eye.

"I can see that," Dean said, still in that same quiet tone; it was almost childlike. "Why do you have them?"

Sam sighed heavily and braced his hands on his knees. With supreme effort, he forced himself to look into his brother's eyes. "I'm sick, Dean."

It felt like all the air has been sucked from the room. Dean wavered on his feet and his knees touched against the second bed. He allowed himself to sink down onto the mattress as Sam's words reverberated around his mind. "I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm sick." But he can't be. It was Dean's job to look after Sam. How could he have missed this? He looked at his brother and saw the signs he had missed before. There were dark circles under Sam's eyes and his skin was pale. His forehead was creased, a sure sign of pain in Sam. How could Dean have missed all this for so long?

"What is it?" Dean asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Cancer," Sam said simply, and Dean's world imploded.

Sam, his Sammy, his little brother had cancer. It wasn't possible. There had to have been some kind of mistake.

Sam saw the moment his words impacted Dean's mind, and he knew the feeling well. He was sure Dean's expression mirrored the one he himself had been sporting the day he walked out of a doctor's office a year ago. It had been shortly after Dean and Castiel had disappeared. He was still deep in the depths of his grief, and nothing could have torn him from the search for his brother, not the fatigue, not the dizziness, not the crippling headaches, nothing except the seizure that gripped him in the middle of a busy diner, landing him in hospital. Things had moved fast after that. He had been diagnosed within a week and started treatment soon after.

That was then, this was now.

Dean's hands were shaking as he rolled the pill bottles in his hands. "What are these?" he asked. It was not the question he wanted to ask, but he was unable to ask that without risking his mind. He already felt like he was one step away from shattering into a thousand pieces.

"Painkillers mostly," Sam said in a tone of forced calm. "Those ones there are antidepressants. Evidently, dying is a sad business, and you need a little help getting through the days."

Dean's heart dropped to his stomach. He was certain he misheard, as there was no way on this earth Sam could be dying. It just wasn't possible. Sure, he had seen it happen before. He had held his brother in Cold Oak as the life seeped out of him, but that was different. That was then. They had paid their dues, both of them. They were supposed to be living on the flipside. Sure Purgatory had been a complication, but compared to this, it felt like a vacation in Hawaii. Dean would gladly spend a century in Purgatory if Sam would just take back the word that caused his heart to break.

"Dying?" he croaked.

Sam looked at him with sympathetic eyes and nods. "Yeah."

"When?"

Sam shrugged. "Who knows?"

"Dammit, Sam, tell me!" Dean demanded.

Sam looked as if he would rather swallow a razorblade than answer the question, but dutiful brother that he was, he answered. "A couple of months, maybe."

"And there isn't anything they can do?"

Sam shook his head. "I've done it all already. Radiotherapy."

"But there has to be more," Dean said desperately. "Chemotherapy, drugs, surgery. They're doctors for crap's sake. Why aren't you in hospital now?"

Sam couldn’t answer that. He couldn’t tell his brother that he was in hospital, undergoing treatment, until a call came through on an old cell phone. A call that gave his life the first light it had seen in over a year. The call that said his brother was back.

"Sammy?"

"They've done all they can," Sam said simply. "Now is time to live."

Dean snorted. "Living! You call what we have been doing living?" Anger was now coming back to him, and he drew on it. Anything was better to feel than the crippling grief. "Dammit, Sam, when were you going to tell me about this? Or was I just going to wake up to find you dead in the bed next to me someday?"

"I was going to tell you, but I knew when I did, it would mean this. I didn't want this. I didn't want to see _that_ look in your eyes. I was hoping we would get to the tablet and Kevin in time to close the gates of Hell once and for all. I wanted this time to mean something, for my life to be something other than that of the man that freed the devil."

Dean's heart sank. After all they had been through, after all Sam had done, he still couldn't forgive himself for that mistake. He had freed Lucifer, but he had also put him back in the cage.

"Don't look at me like that," Sam said. "I'm not looking for pity. I know what a fuck up I have been. It just feels like this is something I can finally do to make it right."

Dean wanted to argue with him, but it was not six hours ago that he was throwing all Sam's mistakes in his face. How could he make up for that? How could Sam ever forgive him for what he said?

"Sam, I'm so—"

"Don't, Dean," Sam said abruptly. "I know you meant what you said, and you were right. I am a royal screw up, always have been. But if we can find Kevin and the tablet, I can make this right before I go."

"You think we're still going after Kevin?" Dean asks incredulously. "Sammy, you're sick. We've got to get you to a hospital. We need a second opinion. Dammit, a third opinion. I don't care what it takes. We're going to fix you."

Sam smiled at Dean. The smile makes Dean want to cry. It speaks of too much understanding. Sam has already been there and done that.

Sam pushed himself to his feet and paced the length of the room. "Okay, I didn't want you to find out like this, but now you know. We need to talk about what happens next."

Dean's mind was already working far ahead of Sam's. Maybe medicine wasn't the answer, maybe the supernatural was, a faith healer or another angel. There had to be some way to save his brother. A deal even.

"No deals!" Sam said firmly, and for a moment, Dean thought Sam really had read his mind. "No healers, no angels. We aren't going down that road again. It always comes back to bite us on the ass. We are going to let nature takes its course and _you_ are going to let me finish what should have been finished all those years ago in Cold Oak."

"Sammy, no.”

"Yes, Dean. We made a deal. No matter what happens to the other, we leave it alone. We don't go looking for trouble. You are going to keep that deal."

"You can't expect me to sit back and watch you die!" Dean growled.

"Of course, I don't," Sam said sympathetically. "You don't have to stay. I have time left. We can search for Kevin; maybe we'll find him. But when the time comes, I want to be alone."

"You can't seriously…"

"I can," Sam said firmly. "This is my choice to make. I don't want you to watch it happen, and if you are being honest with yourself, you know you don't want to watch it either. This way, we're both happy."

Dean closed his eyes. "Happy? Sam, do you honestly think anything about this can make me happy."

"Bad choice of words. What I meant was that this was the best solution for us both. We both get what we want."

"Dammit, Sam, don't think cancer gets you out of an ass kicking."

Sam laughed, and it felt so good he allowed it to buoy him up and take him from the situation for a moment. He knew he was becoming hysterical, but he couldn’t help it. The laughter was so uplifting. He gave himself over to it completely until tears were streaming down his face.

It didn’t last. A warm hand cupped his cheeks and raised his head so he was staring into Dean's eyes. Tears rained down Dean's face, and his eyes were filled with a desperate sadness.

"I'm sorry, Sammy. I'm so sorry." He was apologizing for so much, for the things he said, for the way he had treated Sam since he came back, for the fact his little brother had been damned by something Dean had no way of protecting him from.

Sam nodded. "I know you are."

"I'm not leaving you," Dean said with certainty.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Sam said. "For now, let's just focus on closing the gates to Hell."

 


	2. Chapter 2

****

Soon after his outburst of hysterical laughter, Sam lay down on his bed again and buried his head under the pillow. He wasn’t sleeping, but clearly suffering, so Dean stayed quiet and let him get through it the way he wanted to. He didn’t think talking would do much good anyway. What could he possibly say?

Creeping across the room, he pulled Sam’s laptop out of his bag and booted it up at the table. When he had a search engine open, he typed in cancer and results blurred across the screen. There were millions upon millions, and he didn’t know where to start. He only knew the barest facts about the disease and most of that knowledge came from Dr. Sexy MD. In that, they either killed off the character in a hurry or there was some miracle cure at the last minute. Dean would have given anything for a miracle cure.

The irony was that he had a miracle worker but he was stuck in Purgatory still. All because of Dean. He had dragged Castiel into the faceoff with Dick Roman and because of that, Castiel had been dragged to Purgatory. If he had left the angel out of it, Sam would never have gotten so far into the disease. Castiel could have healed him from the moment he’d got sick. It was more than that though. It was the failure to bring Castiel _out_ _of_ Purgatory too. He’d been at the portal and the angel’s hand had slipped out of Dean’s. He’d tried so hard to get them all out alive, and he’d failed. It was easier to turn his anger against himself; it gave him something to focus on other than the fickle nature of fate in choosing Sam to suffer this.

He slammed the laptop closed and shoved it away from him. This wasn’t a case he could research and find the answer to. There was nothing in their father’s journal that would help him deal with this any better. He was on his own in this. Just like Sam had been. How could he have borne it, being alone with this noose around his neck? Dean wasn’t sure he could have. And Sam was still strong. He had seemed at peace as he’d announced he only had a couple of months to live. Dean remembered the fear he had felt when he came down to the last couple of months of his deal. He’d been terrified, knowing where he was headed. At least he knew Sam wasn’t headed there. He’d been given a ticket to Heaven. They both had.

The realization of what he was thinking settled over him and he jumped to his feet, knocking the chair to the floor. What was he thinking about Heaven and Hell for Sam? It wasn’t going to come to that. He was going to fix his brother. There was no other possible outcome. To hell with what Sam said. He would find a way to save him. Whether it be demon deal, healer or medicine. There was no way he was going to let his brother die.

Sam shifted, dislodging the pillow from his head. He was asleep now, but Dean had disturbed him. Cursing himself—if anyone deserved the peace of sleep, it was Sam—Dean got to his feet, drew the blanket from his own bed, and draped it over Sam. Dean wouldn’t be sleeping that night. He had to stay awake to keep an eye on Sam, as there was a very real risk that he would lose him if he didn’t.

xXx

When morning came around, Sam began to stir. Dean didn’t want Sam to know he’d spent the night watching him sleep, so he jotted a note to say where he’d gone and crept out of the motel. He headed down the street on foot to the diner they’d eaten in the day before. He didn’t want the sound of the Impala’s engine to wake Sam before he was ready.

The diner was open but almost empty. It was still early, just a little past six. A different waitress to the one that served them the night before was behind the counter. The waitress the night before had been young, probably a college kid subbing her tuition taking shifts after classes. Today it was a middle-aged woman with dark hair pinned back behind her head. She looked up and smiled as Dean entered and came to the counter.

“What can I get you, hon?” she asked.

“Two large coffees, please, and…” He trailed off as he thought. He remembered something about sick people needing to eat healthily. Sam tended to do that anyway, but was that right? Should Dean be piling him with calories instead to bulk him up a little more? Energy food.

“And?” The waitress prompted.

Dean appraised the menu. “A short stack and a fresh fruit platter, please.”

Sam would know better than anyone what he should be eating. If he needed calories, he could have the pancakes and vice versa. Dean would have whatever was left.

“Sure thing,” the waitress said. She disappeared through a swing door.

There was a newspaper on the counter and Dean picked up and flipped through the pages. There was nothing about them breaking into the mausoleum, for which he was grateful. They would have to book it out of town fast though. It was never good to hang around once a case was over. They usually drew attention to themselves, fixing the world’s problems, and believed dead or not, they both had a rap sheet a mile long. He didn’t know where to go next though. The obvious answer was a hospital, but which hospital in which state? Where had Sam been treated before? Then he remembered what Sam had said the night before; he’d had a place with that Amelia in Kermit, Texas. That had to be their next stop. Dean needed to see Sam’s doctors to find out the facts. Hell, he didn’t even know what kind of cancer Sam had. Though he didn’t even admit it to himself, Dean was secretly hoping that the doctors would say there had been some kind of mistake, that Sam was okay really, or that they’d underestimated his time left. If anyone could beat this thing, it was Sam. He’d beaten the Devil after all. What was cancer compared to that?

The waitress came back with his order, breaking into his reverie, and handed over the Styrofoam packages of food and their coffees. Dean paid and made his way out of the diner.

The walk back to the motel only took a few minutes. Soon he was shouldering open the door and setting the packages down on the table. Sam’s bed was empty and neatly made, and Dean could hear the shower running.

Despite the fact he knew it would piss his brother off, he crossed the room and knocked on the door. “You okay in there, Sam?” He couldn’t help but ask. He had visions of Sam on the bathroom floor, unconscious.

“Dean?” Sam’s stunned voice came back through the wooden door.

“Yeah.”

He heard the sound of the shower cutting off and then the door swung open. Sam was looking at him like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “You came back.”

“Of course I did,” Dean said, confusion evident in his voice. “Didn’t you see my note?”

“Yeah, but I thought… Never mind.”

He didn’t need to finish his sentence. Dean knew exactly what he was thinking. He thought Dean had run out on him. It wasn’t an irrational fear, Dean had let his brother down lately, but it still stung.

Turning away he said, “I got breakfast.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Ten minutes later, Sam was sitting opposite Dean at the table with the laptop open in front of him. He was working his way through his fruit platter slowly while searching for who-knew-what on the computer.

Dean was watching him surreptitiously, appraising him. He didn’t look like he was in pain today, his brow wasn’t creased and his eyes were bright, but there were still shadows circling them and he was pale. All the things Dean had missed for the last couple of months that should have alerted him to how sick his brother was.

“I can feel you watching me,” Sam said not looking up from the laptop.

“I'm not watching you,” Dean lied.

Sam looked up and smiled. “Yeah, you are, and I get it, but it’s starting to get creepy.”

Dean pushed away his pancakes, his appetite gone. “We need to talk.”

Sam closed the laptop. “What do you want to talk about?”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Oh, I don’t know, how about that shit-storm you unleashed last night. You can’t drop a bomb like that on me and not expect me to ask questions.”

“I can,” Sam said, raking a hand through his hair. “Can’t we just pretend last night never happened? I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Dammit, Sam! This isn’t a one-night stand with a skeeve that we’re talking about, it’s you dying. I think I’ve earned the right to ask a few questions.” That wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t earned the right to ask anything, but he was going to damn well try.

Sam sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

Dean had been waiting permission to ask the many questions he had burning in him, and he didn’t hesitate. “What kind of cancer is it?”

“Brain,” Sam said simply.

Brain. Sam’s wonderful, agile brain, the thing that he had always taken pride in, even as a child. The mind that had saved their asses on a hunt more times than Dean could count. That was where Sam was infected by this… thing. “Like a tumor?” he asked quietly.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. You want the cliff notes or the full edition?”

“I want to know everything.” Dean _needed_ to know everything.

“It’s a tumor on my occipital lobe called a Glioblastoma.” He turned and rubbed the back of his head. “Right here. It’s in deep, so they couldn’t operate.”

“But you had other treatment?” Dean prompted.

“Yeah, radiation therapy.”

“I thought they did chemotherapy for cancer.”

Sam shook his head. “It’s all dependant on the type and position. Radiation was my best bet, so we went with that.”

“But it didn’t work? I mean, you’re still…” Dean couldn’t finish. He couldn’t say the word in reference to his brother.

“I’m dying, yes,” Sam said calmly. “It worked for a while, to prolong my time, but it’s incurable.”

Dean closed his eyes, absorbing the information. “And there’s nothing that can be done now. The doctors tell you that?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably.

Dean glared at him. “Sammy…”

“It was just giving me more time,” Sam said defensively. “It was never going to cure me.”

“So why’d you stop the treatment?”

Sam looked away and Dean understood.

“It was me, wasn’t it?” he said. “You were having it done when I got back.” He cursed. “Why didn’t you tell me then, Sam? I could have come to the hospital to find you. We could have taken care of this thing together.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Sam said. “It was only ever prolonging the inevitable. That call, you coming back, that was the best thing to happen to me in a long time. I finally had an excuse to get out of the damned hospital. I was lying there waiting for death to come, but you came instead. Dean, don’t you understand how good that was? I finally had something positive in my life again.”

Dean disregarded the mention of his brother laying waiting for death. He couldn’t think about that. “I don’t understand. You were fighting it, why did you quit?”

“Because you were back and you needed me.”

“So this is my fault?”

Sam bowed his head. “No, Dean. You aren’t hearing me. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Coming back like you did, that was the best thing.”

“I don’t understand,” Dean said. “How can you be so Zen about this? Why aren’t you pissed? Why aren’t you pissed at me?”

“I was pissed,” Sam said. “For the longest time I was so pissed. I was pissed at my body for doing this to me. I was pissed at the doctors for not being able to fix me. I was pissed at myself for not seeing it sooner, when there was a chance of me beating it. I was never pissed at you though. The only reason I hung on as long as I did was because of you. I knew you would want me to fight, so I did.”

“And now I’m back you’re giving up.”

“No, Dean, now I am living as much as I can while I can. We are going to find Kevin, find out how to shut the gates of Hell, and we’re going to slam them closed. If I can see that happen, great. If not, you’ll have to do it for me.”

Dean pushed himself to his feet and paced the length of the room. No matter what Sam said, it sounded to him like he was giving up.

“Please try to understand, Dean. “I did fight. I did try. But it didn’t work.”

Dean rounded on him. “You fought for me then, when I wasn’t even here to help you, but now I’m here, you’re giving up. I can’t understand that.”

Sam sighed and rubbed his temples. “Fine, I’ll take you to someone that can understand.”

“Oh yeah. Who’s that? Who understands you better than your own brother?”

Sam smiled slightly. “Amelia.”


	3. Chapter 3

Sam could feel Dean’s eyes on him as he sat curled against the window in the idling car, but he didn’t open his eyes. To do that, to look at Dean, would be to see the shadow of his future in Dean’s creased brow and sad eyes. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted Dean to know. He wanted his brother, his pissy, interfering, disappointed at times brother to be with him. Now Dean knew the truth, that had all gone out of the window to be replaced by this person that looked at Sam as if he might drop dead at any minute. Sam wanted normal, but this was anything but.

As if to illustrate Sam’s frustration, Dean spoke, “Sam, we’re here. You need to wake up.” It was the gentle voice and light touch on his arm that bothered Sam. The old Dean would have slapped his arm and cranked up the stereo to wake him. Sam would have given almost anything to go back twenty-four hours to the moment he had let it slip that he was out of time. Or would he? He had always intended to tell Dean the truth. He wanted him to be prepared when the time came. But he had thought he could wait a little longer before it came to that. He could have had a little more normal.

Sam opened his eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the streetlight outside the car.

“You feeling okay?” Dean asked solicitously.

Sam hid a groan with effort—it would convince Dean that he was a delicate flower—and nodded. “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

He looked out of the window and realized where he was. It was the _Ranch Rooms,_ where Sam had lived for a while before he had been admitted to the hospital. It was strange to be back where it had all started. He wondered if Everett still worked the desk. He wondered if his father, Hank, was still alive. He’d developed a friendship with the family after he’d discovered Hank was also sick.

He swung open the car door and climbed out, stretching the kinks in his back earned from a day on the road.  

Dean was tossing the car keys from hand to hand. “I’ll go get us a room.”

“I’ll do it,” Sam said.

“You sure?”

“Dude, it’s like twenty feet to the office. Besides, I know this place.”

“In that case, I’ll come with.”

Sighing to himself, Sam walked up to the motel office and swung open the door. Everett was behind the counter, reading a book. He looked up as they came in and when he caught sight of Sam he jumped to his feet.

“Sam!”

Sam grinned. “Hey, Everett.”

Everett stepped around the counter with a hand outstretched. “Man, it’s good to see you.”

“You too.” Sam shook his hand. “How’s your dad?” Everett looked down at the floor and Sam cursed quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.” Everett rubbed at the back of his neck. “A couple of months ago. The cancer beat him before he could beat it I guess.”

Sam heard Dean’s quick indrawn breath and he didn’t need to look around to know that Dean’s face would reflect his horror. Losing Hank was a blow to Sam, but he wasn’t shocked. Preparing to die yourself gave you a greater acceptance on other’s deaths. Hank had been on borrowed time when Sam’d last seen him, and to his credit, he’d known it.

“So, how are you doing?” Everett asked. “What happened to you? Amelia came here looking for you. She was in a real mess.”

Sam ducked his head guiltily. He knew he had done the right thing, leaving Amelia as he had, but he shouldn’t have left town without letting her know what was happening.

“I had to get out of town for a while,” he said.

“But you’re back now, right?” Everett asked.

Dean cleared his throat loudly and Sam turned. “Sorry. Everett, this is my brother, Dean. We’re going to be in town for a couple of days, so do you have a room?”

“Yeah, sure.” Everett went back behind the counter and grabbed a key from the back wall. “Room twelve is free. That be okay?”

“That’ll be fine,” Sam said, rooting through his wallet for some cash. He didn’t want to sting Everett and his mom with a fake credit card.

When he tried to hand over the bills, Everett shook his head. “We don’t want your money here, Sam. The room’s yours as long as you want it.”

Sam smiled. “Thanks, man. We should only be here a couple of days at the most.”

Everett raised his hands. “As long as you need.”

Sam nodded his thanks and he and Dean said their goodbyes and went back to the car to collect their belongings. Sam unlocked the door and looked around the room. Apart from the fact it had two beds instead of a double, it was identical to the room he had occupied when he was here with its yellow walls and tan couch against the wall.

“Nice place,” Dean said, dropping the bags down onto the couch. “You stayed here before then.”

Sam nodded. “After I left the hospital.”

“What happened to the kid’s dad?”

Sam dropped down onto the couch and raked a hand through his hair. “He had cancer, colon, and it was pretty far gone by the time they found it. He hit it with everything he had, but I guess it wasn’t enough.”

“You don’t seem that surprised,” Dean observed.

“I’m not. I’m upset, Hank was a good man and he left a family behind, but I’m not surprised. We both knew what was coming for us; we just didn’t know which one of us would go first.”

Dean shook his head, muttering to himself. Sam would once have tried to decipher Dean’s mood and try to fix it, but he knew now there was no need. Dean was thinking that Sam was wrong to talk about his death so calmly. Dean didn’t understand though. Sam didn’t want his last emotion to be fear.

xXx

Sam was up first in the morning. Dean was sitting on his bed with his chin touching his chest. Sam guessed he had tried to stay up—probably to keep an eye on Sam—but sleep had caught him anyway.

He crept out of bed and jotted down a note, telling Dean where he was going. Letting himself out of the motel he took a deep breath of the clean, morning air and smiled. It was going to be a scorcher; his favorite kind of day.

When he got back to the motel, laden with a breakfast burger for Dean and pancakes for himself, he found Dean pacing up and down the room, clearly agitated. As Sam entered, Dean spun on his heel and glared at him.

“Where the hell have you been?” he said loudly.

Sam held up the platters of breakfast as explanation. “I left a note.”

“Dammit, Sam. You can’t just leave like that. Something could have happened to you!”

Sam sighed and set the food down on the counter. “I can still make it to the diner. If something had happened, someone would have called. Your number is my emergency contact.”

Dean huffed. “Which would have been a great comfort when I got the call to tell me you dropped dead in the middle of the street.”

“I’m not just going to drop dead one day, Dean. It’s a process, and I am merely at the start of that. You can take your eyes off me for more than a minute and I’ll still be fine.”

“I’ve been reading up,” Dean said. “You _could_ die without warning. Tumors cause bleeds and things.”

“And you could die crossing the street but that doesn’t make me stop you jaywalking.”

“It’s not the same thing, and you know it!”

Sam sat down at the table and raked a hand through his hair. He hated this. It was almost a tangible thing, Dean’s fear, and Sam didn’t want that. “You’ve got to let me live, Dean, or all this is for nothing. I can’t spend the rest of my days in bed waiting for death. I won’t. I am going to live as much as I can while I can, and that means you’re going to have to loosen the reins a little. You can trust me to know what’s best for me.”

“Apparently, I can’t,” Dean snapped. “If you knew what was best for you, you would still be in hospital right now, having the treatment. I came back and you let it just…” He slapped a hand against the wall. “Dammit, Sam!”

Sam massaged his temples. He had a headache developing. He didn’t think it was going to be a bad one, not one that left him prone in bed, but dealing with Dean’s temper wasn’t helping.

Dean immediately looked contrite. “You okay?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I just have a headache.” He crossed the room and rooted through his duffel for his meds. Shaking one out into his palm, he walked to the counter and poured himself a glass of water. He knocked it back in one swallow and then turned to face Dean, who looked like he would like to take a hammer to his own head in return for retracting Sam’s pain.

“I’m fine, Dean,” he said, forcing a smile. “Now, eat your breakfast so we can go see Amelia.”

Dean threw himself into a chair at the table and unwrapped his burger. “You haven’t told me much about this Amelia. What’s the deal there?”

Sam sat opposite him and drew his own package of pancakes across the table. Letting his mind drift back over the months, he finally explained Amelia. “It was about a month after you disappeared. I got it into my head that Crowley was the key to getting you back, so I was tracing demons and trying to make them talk. There were demon signs here in Kermit, so I made the trip. I’d been having headaches for a while, but I figured it was just a side-effect of the stress I was under—hunting the Leviathans, losing you and Cas. I was in a diner, just like any other day on the road, and I had a seizure. Amelia was the one that took care of me. I was taken in to a hospital, I was pretty out of it, and they did an MRI. That’s when they found the cancer. From there things moved fast. They started the treatment, and I seemed to get sick overnight.”

“And Amelia…?”

Sam smiled. “I guess she felt bad for me. That was how it started at least. She came by the hospital every day after work, and we became good friends. We had something in common; she’d lost someone, too. I was a distraction from her own problems. We became good friends. Then, when it was time to leave the hospital, she let me move in with her. She took care of me while I was having the treatment.”

“So, you were friends? When did that become something more?

“it didn’t, not really. We were just two lost souls clinging together. I was in no state to pursue any kind of relationship, and she was still grieving. I loved her, I still do, but not in the way I loved Jess. Amelia saved me, and for that I will always be grateful, but I couldn’t offer her what she really needed.”

“Why did you let me think it was something more?”

“Because it was easier than telling the truth. I couldn’t tell you I didn’t look for you because I was in the hospital, so I pretended. It was easier to deal with you being angry with me. I didn’t want to see that look in your eye that you’ve got now.”

Dean sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I wish you would have. I could have helped you.”

Sam smiled sadly. “You really couldn’t. I’m beyond help now, Dean.”

Dean shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

“You will soon enough.” Sam knew that.

xXx

Dean drove them across town to Amelia’s clinic, following Sam’s directions. It was strange to see the familiar stores and houses again. Sam never thought he would be back here, least of all with Dean in tow.

As they pulled up outside the clinic, Sam took a deep breath. The simple white-brick building seemed steeped in foreboding to him now. He had spent hours here before, sitting with Amelia’s dog Riot in the back room while she worked, but that was before everything changed.

Dean climbed out of the car and then peered in through the open door. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

He got out of the car and led Dean into the building. Roberta was working the desk and as she caught sight of Sam, she gasped. “Sam. You’re… I mean…”

Sam knew what she was trying to say. He was alive. She had thought he was dead. If that was what she thought, that had to be what Amelia thought too. He felt a pang of guilt. He should have called Amelia to at least let her know what was happening. She hadn’t needed to live with the weight of not knowing hanging over her for the past few months. She deserved better than that.

“Is she here?” Sam asked.

Roberta nodded. “She’s free. You want me to tell her you’re here or do you want to go through?”

“I’ll go through.”

With Dean following him, Sam stepped around the counter and opened the door into the treatment room.

Amelia was crouched in front of a cupboard, with a clipboard in hand. “Roberta,” she said without turning, “can you add the iodine to the order? We’re running low.”

Sam cleared his throat and she straightened and turned. She paled as soon as she saw him, and the clipboard dropped out of her hand.

“Hello, Amelia,” Sam said with a small smile.

She stepped forward as if in a trance, coming to stand in front of him. He hand rose, and Sam thought she was going to touch him, to assure herself he was real, but instead she slapped him hard across the cheek.

“Hey!” Dean shouted, starting forward.

Sam put a hand on his chest to hold him back. “It’s okay, Dean.”

“I thought you were dead!” she shouted. “I came to the hospital and they said you were gone! How could you do that to me? How could you just leave me like that?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said plaintively.

“You’re sorry!” She laughed and Sam heard the tinge of hysteria in it. “I’ve been grieving for you for three months because I thought you were dead!”

“I’m sorry.” Sam didn’t seem able to think of anything else to say.

Amelia’s eyes filled with tears and she reached up again, Sam braced himself for another slap, but she cupped his cheek instead. She blinked and the tears slipped down her cheeks. “I thought you were dead,” she said softly.

“Not yet.”

She gripped the collar of his shirt and attempted to shake him. Sam might be sick, but he was still strong enough to resist her paltry strength.

Sam pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her and soothed her quietly. She sobbed against him, dampening his shirt with her tears.

After a long time, it seemed like an age to Sam, she pulled back and looked him in the eye. “What happened?”

Sam turned back to face Dean. “Amelia, this is Dean.”

Amelia looked stunned. “I thought he was dead.”

Sam huffed a laugh. If anyone should understand someone coming back from the dead, it was Amelia. “So was Don,” he said.

“That’s unbelievable,” she said.

“Unbelievable or not, it’s the truth,” Dean said holding out a hand. “Dean Winchester. Nice to meet you.”

Amelia stared at his hand for a moment in stunned silence, and then she took his and shook. “Nice to meet you, Dean. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

Amelia turned back to Sam and her hands came up to trace across the furrows on his brow. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Sam smiled. “I am.”

“How bad is it?”

It felt strange to be asked that question again after all this time. It was their own code of gauging Sam’s suffering. She would ask and he would endeavor to be honest.

“Not bad,” he said. “Only a five.”

“Five what?” Dean asked.

Amelia gave Sam an appraising look. “Why doesn’t he…?”

“Dean’s kinda playing catch-up,” Sam admitted. “I only told him a couple of days ago.”

“Why?” she asked with a steel edge to her tone.

Sam shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

She pushed back her hair from her face and blew out a breath. “In that case he’s got a lot of catching up to do.”


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter Four_ **

 

Dean sat back on the chair in the back room at the clinic and looked around. It was small, with a counter loaded with a coffee machine and a few dozen magazines and bunch of mugs. The walls were painted a clinical white and there were posters listing breeds of dog and other animals. He felt distinctly uncomfortable alone in here with Amelia. Sam had excused himself and left them to talk in peace. Dean guessed he didn’t want to hear what Amelia had to say; he already knew it all for himself.

“So,” Dean said slowly. “You’re a vet?”

Amelia nodded. “For a few years now. But I’m thinking you didn’t come here to talk about my choice of career. You want to talk about Sam.”

Dean raked a hand over his face. “He thinks you can make me understand what he can’t.”

“You know the medical facts, I assume.”

“Sammy has cancer, some kind of brain tumor.” He paused. “And he says he’s dying.”

She looked at him sympathetically. “And you want me to tell you he’s lying maybe or that he’s overstating it.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No, but I can’t tell you what you want to hear. I wish I could, you don’t know how much I wish that, but it would be a lie. Sam is very ill. I wasn’t overreacting when I saw him. I honestly thought he’d been dead these last few months. Seeing him, especially seeing him as he is, still doing well, is a heck of a shock.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Doing well? Did you get a good look at him? He’s a wreck.”

Something dark crossed Amelia’s face, some knowledge Dean wasn’t privy to. It annoyed him. He was done with secrets. If there was something to know, he should be in the loop. Sam was his brother after all.

“He’s doing better than he should be,” Amelia said softly. “He looks better now than he did last time I saw him. I think it’s you.”

“What’s me?”

“You’ve given him something to fight for.”

“Not enough,” Dean said bitterly. “He’s not fighting now.”

Amelia crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t understand. If the doctors were right, Sam should be in the active stages of dying right now, but he’s not. He’s up and around and living. Don’t you see what an achievement that is on its own?”

One part of her tirade stuck in Dean’s head—if the doctors were right. Did that mean there was a chance they weren’t? Could this all be some kind of mistake? Could Sam be all right after all? The possibility filled Dean and lifted him from his despair for a moment.

“You saying there’s a chance they’re wrong, the doctors?”

Amelia sighed and looked at him with a little too much understanding in her gaze. “No, Dean. I may not be a human doctor, but I know what I’m talking about. I saw the scans.”

Dean rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Do you realize how messed up this sounds. It’s Sam; he shouldn’t be dealing with this. I don’t know how much he told you, but believe me, he’s paid his dues to the world. He shouldn’t have to go through this.”

“I know everything and nothing about Sam at the same time. I know the exact color of his blood, but I don’t know what he did for a living before he got sick. I know the various ways of telling he’s in pain, but I don’t know where he grew up. I think I know more about you than I do him. He spoke about you a lot.”

Dean felt like a jerk for every scathing thought he’d had towards his brother since he came back from Purgatory. He had believed Sam hadn’t looked for him because he had been happy with his woman, when in truth he’d been leaning on this woman to survive as he battled cancer. He knew intellectually that it wasn’t his fault, Sam had lied to him, but he felt like he should have known from the start. What kind of brother was he that didn’t realize his brother was sick?

“Sam said he fought,” he said thoughtfully.

“He did fight, harder than I thought anyone capable of. He hit it with everything he had and then some, but it beat him down.”

“There has to be more they can do. You said you thought he was dead before, but he’s doing well, so maybe there’s a chance…”

She smiled sadly. “I wish there was. Sam could maybe eke out a little more time if he had more treatment, but it would only be time, and it would hurt him to do it. He suffered so much before. I can understand him wanting to live free more than live long.”

Dean sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “I still can’t believe this is happening.”

Amelia opened her mouth to answer, but the door creaked open and Sam poked his head in. “I, uh, need the car keys.”

Dean looked up and saw the deep frown lines on Sam’s brow. “You okay, man?”

Sam nodded slowly. “Yeah, fine, just need to get to my meds.”

Amelia rose to her feet and crossed the room. She placed a hand on Sam’s cheek and he leaned into the touch. “How bad is it?” Amelia asked in a whisper.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. “Seven, maybe an eight.” He swayed on his feet and Dean lurched towards him. Gripping Sam’s arm, he led him to a chair and eased him into it as Sam’s knees buckled.

“Do you know where his meds are?” Amelia asked.

Dean nodded. “I think they’re in his duffel back at the motel.” He cursed himself for not bringing them out with them. Why hadn’t he thought?

Sam moaned and shook his head. “Glove compartment. Spares.”

Dean pulled the keys out of his pocket and jogged out to the car. He found the yellow bottle of pills and ran back into the clinic. He was gone maybe a minute at the most, but something had happened in the time he’d been gone. Amelia was kneeling in front of Sam and he had his head buried against her neck. He was drawing deep breaths and his hands were shaking.

“Sammy?”

“M’fine,” Sam said in a hoarse voice. “Just need the pills.”

Dean handed them to Amelia and she shook a pill out into her palm. Sam fought to get himself upright again and he dry swallowed the pill with a grimace. His eyes were red looking and wet.

Amelia ran a hand through his hair gently and asked in a soft voice, “Do you need anything else?”

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Just give me a—“ Whatever he was asking for they didn’t know, as at that moment, he pitched forward onto Amelia. Dean lurched forward and supported his shoulders and Amelia struggled out from under him.

Dean pushed Sam back in the chair and cupped his head in his hands. For a moment, he had a very real fear that Sam was dead, but then reason caught up with him as he saw Sam’s chest rising and falling.

“Help me get him down,” Amelia said. “He’ll be more comfortable.”

With difficulty, Dean and Amelia eased Sam down to the floor. Amelia knelt and pulled Sam’s head into her lap. She ran a hand over his cheeks tenderly.

“What happened?” Dean asked.

“His body couldn’t take anymore,” she said. “The pain was too much for him, so it shut down. It’s a defense mechanism.”

Dean pulled his phone out of his pocket and was about to dial for an ambulance when Amelia spoke up. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think I'm doing? I’m calling an ambulance. My brother just took a nosedive at my feet. He needs a doctor.”

Amelia shook her head. “This isn’t the first time this has happened, Dean. He’ll be awake soon and he won’t want the fuss.”

“Tough shit,” Dean snapped. “He needs a doctor.”

Amelia sighed and turned her attention back to Sam whose was lying pale and still on the floor. “Do what you feel you need to, but be prepared for him to be pissed.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Sam’s spent half his life being pissed at me. This will be nothing new.”

xXx

Dean followed the ambulance in the Impala as it raced towards the hospital. Amelia rode in the ambulance with Sam. Despite her assertions that he would come around in his own time, it was obvious that she was worried too as Sam had remained unconscious through the ambulance’s arrival at the clinic and his being loaded onto a stretcher.

For his part, Dean was terrified. Sam had called it a process, and Amelia had been shocked that he was doing as well as he had been. Was this the first step in Sam’s downward spiral? How fast would it happen? Would he even wake up this time?

He had a hundred questions and no one to answer them. No one yet, anyway. As soon as he got hold of Sam’s doctor, he was going to get some answers.

He had to park the car in the lot, so he was it was a little after Sam’s arrival that he walked through the doors of the ER. Amelia was standing just inside the entrance, waiting for him.

“How is he?” Dean asked immediately.

She took his hand and led him to a corner. Dean immediately sensed bad news was coming, and his heart contracted painfully in his chest. “He’s okay, right?”

“They’ve taken him down for a scan. He’s still not conscious.”

“You said he’d wake up!” Dean said angrily. “You didn’t want me to call the ambulance.”

Amelia looked down at the floor. “I was wrong.”

Dean turned away from her and gritted his teeth in anger. For all her talk about how well she knew Sam, she was useless. If it had been down to her, Sam would have been left on that floor until he woke up, which he still hadn’t done.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” she said.

Dean rounded on her. “I thought you knew what you were talking about!”

“I do. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and Sam has always come out of it on his own before.”

Dean checked his watch. “Well, it’s been thirty minutes now, and he’s still not out of it. They’re scanning him now for what exactly?”

“There were signs of increased ICP—intracranial pressure—and they need to see what’s causing it. It could just be the tumor, as it grows, but they can’t be sure without a scan.”

Dean grimaced. “I read up on this. It could be a bleed or something, too, right?”

“That’s a possibility,” she admitted.

Dean cursed and scrubbed a hand over his face. Bleeds were bad, Sam could end up paralyzed or worse. Even now, he could be slipping away without even his brother with him. It was so messed up. He needed to see Sam.

“Come, sit down,” Amelia said gently. “There won’t be news for a while yet.”

As the anger bled from Dean, so did the adrenaline, and he was suddenly exhausted. He allowed Amelia to lead him to a chair and he sank down onto it with his head in his hands.

He stayed like that, bowed over and attempting to ignore Amelia’s nervous chatter, for a long time. Eventually, a distraction came in the form of a middle-aged man wearing pale green scrubs. He came over to the corner where they were sitting and greeted Amelia effusively.

“Doctor Jacobsen, this is Dean, Sam’s brother,” Amelia said.

The doctor held out a hand to Dean. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dean.”

Dean shook his hand and finally asked one of the questions burning in him. “How’s Sam?”

The doctor smiled. “He’s not happy at the moment, but medically, he’s doing well.”

“He’s awake?” Amelia asked.

“He came around in the MRI. As you can imagine, he’s most unhappy to be back here.” He looked around the waiting room. “I can take you to see him now, if you like. He’s on the ward.”

Dean was torn. He wanted to see Sam again, to make sure he was really okay, but at the same time, he needed to talk to the doctor. “Can we talk a little first?” Dean asked. “I’ve got a hundred questions.”

The doctor frowned. “I can only answer so much. I am bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“But he’s my brother.”

“That is true, but as my patient, Sam has the right to privacy. I can’t tell you anything without his say so.”

That didn’t worry Dean. Sam would give the doctor to go ahead to talk to him. “Let’s get that from him then,” he said.

The doctor led him and Amelia through a set of double doors and into a long hall with door leading off it. As they passed nurses and orderlies in the hall, they all smiled at and greeted Amelia as if they were old friends. Dean guessed they probably were. If Sam had been in hospital for a while and Amelia had been taking care of him, she would have had plenty of time to make friends with the nurses. That should have been him. He should have been the one taking care of Sam. It was through no fault of his own, he had been trapped in Purgatory at the time, but he felt guilty nonetheless.

The doctor knocked on a door and then eased it open. Dean wasn’t sure what to expect when he saw his brother. Would he look as bad as he did at the clinic? Would he still be in pain? What he definitely didn’t expect to see was Sam sitting on the edge of the bed tugging at his IV. Beside him was the clear plastic tubing of a nasal cannula. It looked to Dean like Sam was working towards getting out of the door when they arrived.

“Sam,” Doctor Jacobsen said patiently. “I know I told you I wanted you to rest. Attempted break-outs don’t count as resting.”

Sam shook his head. “And I know I told you I wasn’t staying, so I guess we’re both disappointed.” He looked past the doctor and saw Dean and Amelia. “Who called the ambulance?”

Dean expected Amelia to rat him out, she seemed to like to keep Sam sweet, but she merely glared at him. “You needed to be brought in, Sam. You were out for over thirty minutes, and you look like hell.”

Sam shrugged and looked to the doctor. “So, what’s the damage?”

The doctor gave Sam an appraising look. “I’ll tell you if you lie down again and leave your IV alone. That’s quality painkiller you are rejecting.”

Sam sighed and sat back on the bed with his legs stretched out in front of him and his ankles crossed. “Can’t deny that. You guys definitely have the good stuff.”

The doctor sat down on a chair and clasped his hands on his knees. He looked from Dean to Sam. “Are you sure you want to discuss this now?”

If Sam asked him to leave, Dean thought he would slug him, brain tumor be damned. He was finally within reach of getting some answers and he wasn’t going to leave now. Not for anything.

“Nah,” Sam said easily. “This is my brother. If you don’t tell him everything now, he’ll beat it out of me later.” His lips tugged into a smile again and Dean wondered what exactly it was in that IV that had Sam so relaxed after a medical incident like the one he’d just gone through. Neither Amelia or the doctor seemed bothered by it, which meant they were used to dealing with a stoned Sam, or maybe this was the face Sam presented to them all the time—the happy-go-lucky guy he had been what felt like a lifetime ago when Dean had collected him from Stanford.

“Okay,” Doctor Jacobsen said. “The news isn’t good, I’m afraid. The tumor is growing and this is putting increased pressure on your brain.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Nothing unexpected though?”

The doctor frowned. “No, that’s not unexpected, and from your outward presentation, I would say you are doing very well, however…”

And it had been sounding so good, Dean thought. Why did there have to be a however?

“However?” Amelia prompted and Dean’s attention snapped back to the doctor.

“However, while we had you under the MRI I ran a few other checks.”

“Kidneys?” Sam said cryptically.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, kidneys.” He leaned forward in his seat. “Sam, how long have you been exhibiting symptoms of kidney failure?”

Sam looked down at his hands clasped in his lap and his face said it all. It was his ‘busted’ face. The last time Dean had seen it had been when Sam’s had admitted to seeing Lucifer again. It was the face he had when he was trying to hide something big but he’d been caught out.

“Answer the man,” Dean said harshly. He didn’t mean to take his temper out on his brother, but he had to blame someone other than himself.

“A week or so,” Sam said quietly and then looked the doctor in the eye. “Is it secondaries?”

“Secondaries?” Dean asked though Amelia seemed to have understood. She was watching Sam carefully.

The doctor nodded. “There is a new growth on your right kidney. This wouldn’t be such a problem if your left was fully functioning, but it seems to be working at a fifty-percent capability.”

“You telling me he has more cancer!” Dean said hoarsely.

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam said. “This is what’s to be expected. It’s how it happens.”

Dean shook his head. He had come here hoping to hear that Sam and Amelia were overstating it, but he was hearing that not only did Sam really have cancer, but he had more than they knew, and parts of him were failing. He didn’t think he could take much more. He rubbed at his eyes. “Okay, so what do we do about this new kidney thing?”

“There are options,” Doctor Jacobsen said. “Chemotherapy is one, but you should know any treatment now will not be curative. It will merely give Sam more time.”

Dean clapped his hands together. “Right. Let’s get to work on that then. The more time the better.”

“No, Dean,” Sam said firmly. “No more treatment. We’ve got other things to be doing.”

“You think I care about that… _stuff?”_ Dean said pointedly. “This is about getting you well, Sam.”

“You’re not listening. They can’t get me well. They can just give me more time.”

Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “Time sounds good to me.”

Sam drew a deep, steady breath and looked at the doctor. “Would you guys mind giving me a minute with my brother?”

“Of course not,” the doctor said, getting to his feet. “I will be back into see you later. Do me a favor until then, leave your IV alone and stay in bed. The nurses will be on my ass otherwise.”

Sam huffed a laugh. “I make no promises.”

Doctor Jacobsen patted his shoulder and made for the door. Amelia stared searchingly at Sam for a moment but when he nodded, she followed.

When the door clicked closed behind them, Dean sat down in the chair the doctor had vacated and looked at Sam expectantly.

“I am not having more treatment,” Sam said doggedly. Dean opened his mouth to speak but Sam held up a hand to silence him. “I’m not having _anything_ else done until we find Kevin and get the tablet back.”

“How can you say that when you know what you’re risking?” Dean asked. “Sam, you could die before we even find Kevin, let alone close the gates. I have a feeling it’s going to be more than a case of finding the right key and giving it a twirl. If you want to be alive for that, you need the treatment.”

Sam shook his head. “Let’s face facts, Dean. I’m not going to be here to close the gates. What’s happening now, my kidneys, that’s the first step in my body giving up. I don’t have long, and I want what time I have to be used for something other than sitting around in a hospital bed. You weren’t here before; you didn’t see what the radiation did to me. I was sick all the time and so tired all I wanted to do was sleep. That was just radiation. Chemotherapy will be even worse. I’m not putting myself through that for the sake of a couple of extra weeks when those weeks will be spent lying useless in bed. I’m not so bad right now. The pain is manageable, and I can get around still. You need me on my feet not lying in a bed.”

“I need you alive,” Dean said through gritted teeth.

Sam shook his head. “No, you _want_ me alive. I’m sorry this has happened so fast for you. You’ve not had the time to prepare, but I have. I know what’s coming for me.”

“Stop with that already!” Dean said angrily. “I’ve had it with this whole ‘strength in the face of death’ thing. It’s crap. You know how I know that? Because it was crap when I was doing it before my deal came due. Remember how pissed you were at me then? ‘Cause I do.”

“That was different,” Sam said. “You were facing Hell then.” He shrugged. “Unless I did something awful in the last couple years, I’m good for Heaven. That’s not frightening. Dean, that’s amazing.”

Dean stared into his eyes and knew there was no moving his brother from this. Sam was determined to find Kevin, and nothing he could say or do was going to change that…. Unless. An idea occurred to him. If anything would work, this would.

“Okay,” he said. “Say I agree. I help you bust out and we go find Kevin and get the tablet back. Will you have the treatment when we’ve found him?”

Sam nodded. “Sure. I’m not suicidal, you know. I just want it to count for something. If we find Kevin and get the tablet back, I’ll let the doctor use me as a lab rat all he likes.”

Dean got to his feet. “Awesome. I need coffee, how about you?”

Sam smiled. “Coffee would be good. I guess I’ve got to let this IV run its course, and then I’ll be good to get out of here.”

Dean walked out of the room and along the hall. He saw Amelia and the doctor talking in a corner and he guessed they were talking about Sam, but he didn’t join them to listen. He had something more important to do. He walked into the bathroom, where he could be assured of privacy, and dialed. He got voicemail, which he had expected, but that didn’t bother him. He figured someone as OCD as Kevin had to be checking his messages.

An automated voice told him to leave a message and he took a deep breath. “Listen up, Kevin. I know you’re pissed at me because of the whole almost killing your mother thing, but you’re going to have to suck it up and listen to me. Sam’s sick, he’s more than sick, he’s dying, and he refuses to get help until we find you. So, here’s the thing. You’re going to call me and tell me where you are as _soon_ as you get this message. If you don’t, and my brother dies, I will dedicate the rest of my life to hunting you down. I don’t care how many AP classes you took. If I lose my brother because of you, I will find you and make sure you pay for it.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

 

When Dean got back to Sam’s room, two cups of coffee in hand, Amelia was sitting beside his bed holding his hand and Sam was asleep. Blessing his good fortune, Dean handed one of the cups of coffee to Amelia and sat down on the chair against the wall.

“Where did you go?” Amelia asked.

“I had to make a call.” Dean said laconically. He wasn’t really paying Amelia any attention. He was cataloging Sam’s appearance. He looked pale and sickly still, and the shadows under his eyes were pronounced, but he didn’t look like he was in pain anymore, which Dean took as a positive. There wasn’t much that else could be called positive.

Amelia turned Sam’s hand and traced a finger over his palm. There was a look of such tenderness on her face that Dean felt like he was intruding on something private. He didn’t look away though. He was still trying to understand Amelia’s relationship with Sam, if they weren’t a couple why was Amelia so invested in Sam, and observing them together was the only clue he had.

“What’s the deal with you two?” he asked. “Sam said you weren’t a couple, but the way you are with him…”

“Sam is very important to me,” Amelia said sadly.

“You love him.”

Amelia nodded, still looking at Sam. “Very much.”

“And he loves you.”

Amelia smiled slightly and finally turned to look at Dean. “How much has Sam told you about how we came to be together?”

“He said you were there when he had the first seizure and you took care of him. He said you felt sorry for him.”

Amelia sighed. “He never did understand. I love Sam, I am in love with him, but he never felt the same way. When I met Sam, I was grieving. My husband had just died—or so I believed—and we clung together for mutual comfort. That developed into something more for me, but never for him. Then Don came back, and everything changed.” Seeing Dean’s blank look she continued. “Don is my husband. He joined the military and was deployed to Afghanistan. A few months later he was reported dead. I believed he was dead. Then four months ago, while Sam was living with me, I got a call telling me he was alive. He been captured, you see.”

“How did Sam take that?” Dean asked. “The news that your husband was still alive?”

Amelia’s brow creased into a frown. “The only way he knew how. He left me and moved into the hospital again. Don came back and we started our life together again. I would come and see Sam in the hospital, then one day I arrived to find that he’d left AMA.” She drew a deep breath. “Sam was, is, very private. I always knew he wouldn’t want me there at the end, and when I heard he’d gone, I thought he had left to die.”

Dean cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, he said the same thing to me. He doesn’t want me there at the end.”

“I can believe that. I can imagine your response, too.”

“Damn right. I’m not leaving him to die alone. I’m not letting him die at all.”

Amelia smiled slightly. “That right there is denial. It’s one of the five stages of grief.”

Dean sighed impatiently. She didn’t know what she was talking about. How could she? She didn’t know the truth of the world. There were ways to save Sam, and he was going to track one of them down and make good on the promise he’d made himself after Sam had been revived the first time, in Cold Oak: that nothing would take away his brother again. He had failed that promise before, but he wouldn’t this time.

His phone beeped in his pocket and he pulled it out. His heart leapt into his throat and he hurried out of the room and into the hall.

“Kevin?”

“This better not be a trick,” Kevin said brutally.

“Listen to my voice and tell me it’s a trick. Sam is dying.”

He heard a heavy sigh. “Okay. What do you want me to do?”

“Where are you?” Dean asked.

“Is this line secure?”

“Dammit, Kevin. This isn’t some movie. You think Crowley’s bugging the phones? Just tell me where you are.”

“I’m in Santa Fe. There’s a abandoned diner we’re hiding out in.”

“Okay. Text me the address and I’ll be with you tomorrow. I need to stay here tonight to keep an eye on Sam.”

“Is he really dying?” Kevin asked.

“He’s really sick, but he’s not going to die,” Dean said determinedly. “Not if I’ve got anything to do with it.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow. And, Dean, I’m really sorry about Sam.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Dean ended the call and leaned his head back against the wall for a moment, savoring the relief. Kevin was on his way. They still didn’t have the demon tablet, but it was a step in the right direction. They had Kevin on side, maybe that would be enough to persuade Sam to get the treatment.

xXx

Sam woke up around dusk, and immediately started demanding that they leave the hospital. Dean didn’t want to tell him about Kevin yet, not until he’d made sure Kevin wasn’t tricking them again, so he helped Sam persuade the nurse to unhook his IV and get him out of there.

Against Sam’s protests, Dean insisted that he bring the car around to the entrance to pick him up. When he pulled up, Amelia and Sam were deep in discussion, and he had to wait a few minutes in a no waiting zone for them to finish their conversation.

Eventually, Sam climbed into the passenger side and relaxed into his seat.

“What was that about?” Dean asked.

“Amelia wants us to come stay with her?” Sam said lazily—the drugs were still clearly in his system.

Dean raised his eyebrows. “And you said no because…?” It wasn’t that he particularly wanted to stay with Amelia, but he thought it would be more comfortable for Sam to be somewhere he knew better than the motel.

“Because Don will be home soon, and there’s only so much the man can be forced to take. Apparently, he’s taken work as a long distance lorry driver. But he’s due home tomorrow, and I don’t think he’d take kindly to finding us sleeping in his spare room. Besides, it’s only one more night. Tomorrow we can get back to the search for Kevin.

Dean grunted and pulled out onto the main road. The drive back to the motel took about ten minutes, and Sam spent it all staring out of the window at the passing scenery. He looked deep in thought, and Dean didn’t want to annoy him, so he stayed quiet, too.

When they pulled up at the motel, the kid Sam had introduced him to, Everett, was closing up the office. He waved at Sam but he didn’t come over, for which Dean was grateful. He wanted to get his brother into the room and get some food in him before he slept. It’d been a hell of a day and despite the fact he’d slept in the hospital, he looked exhausted.

They made their way into the room and Sam immediately sat at the table and pulled out his laptop.

“What are you doing?” Dean asked.

“What do you think? I’m looking for Kevin.”

Dean rubbed at the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Listen, Sam, I think I’ve got a lead on that already.”

“You do?” Sam looked shocked. “How’d you do that?”

“I kinda spoke to him earlier.”

Sam looked confused for a moment and then some understanding seemed to settle over him. He sighed heavily and snapped the laptop closed. “Let me guess, you told him about me.”

“I may also have threatened him a little.”

Sam looked so pissed Dean almost expected steam to come out of his ears. He laid his palms flat on the table and stared down at them. When he spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “You threatened him. What were you hoping to achieve, my own mortification?”

Anger came to Dean’s defense. “No, Sam. I was hoping to save your life. You said you needed Kevin and the tablet before you’d get treatment, so I delivered Kevin. We’ve just got to get the tablet back and you’re good to go.”

“As easy as that, huh?” Sam sighed heavily. “I know this is all a lot for you to take in, but you’ve got to realize, even if I do get the treatment, I’m still dying. You’ve got to accept that.”

“I don’t have to accept shit.”

“Yes, you do. The sooner you realize that this is going to happen, the easier it will be for you.”

Dean shook his head. “Say the treatment doesn’t work—and it might. Doctors are wrong all the time—then we’ll find some other way to save you. You’re not dying. I won’t let you.”

Sam got to his feet and walked towards Dean, his hands bunched into fists. Dean thought Sam was going to throw a punch.

“You will let me go,” Sam said. “We’re not making deals with angels, demons or any other fugly you can come up with. You need to agree to that now or I'm out of here.”

“You’re going to leave?” Dean asked with a quirked brow.

“Yes,” Sam said simply. “And this time, you won’t find me. What do you think’s gonna happen? You make another deal? The demons won’t touch you after what happened last time. Castiel is in Purgatory. Balthazar is gone. You got another angel buddy you’re not telling me about?”

Dean shook his head. “I’ll find a way.”

Sam threw up his arms. “No, you really won’t. And you’ll only hurt yourself and me trying. You need to get it through your head that this is happening, and you’ve got to let me go. We made a deal, no matter what happens, we let it happen. This is my time to die, and you’re going to let me.”

Dean turned away. “I can’t do that.”

“Fine,” Sam said. “I will leave. Good luck fixing me if you can’t even find me.” He grabbed his duffel from the bed and made for the door.

Dean stepped in front of the door, blocking him. “You can’t leave, Sam.”

“I can and I will. You can’t watch me forever. You have to sleep sometimes. You want to wake up one morning and find me gone?”

“You wouldn’t.”

Sam huffed a laugh. “I would.”

“You can’t leave me,” he said quietly.

“And you can’t save me. I will stay and get the treatment, but only if you swear that you won’t interfere with this. When the time comes, you have to let me go.”

Dean looked into his eyes and saw the determination there. Dean didn’t want his brother to die, but he wanted Sam to leave even less. If this had to happen, Dean had to be there for it. It was an impossible situation, but Dean knew he had to make this deal. He couldn’t let Sam leave him.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “I won’t interfere. When the time comes, I’ll let you…” His voice broke.

“You’ll let me go,” Sam finished for him.

Tears springing to his eyes, Dean nodded. “I’ll let you go.”

Sam smiled slightly. “Thank you, Dean.”

xXx

Amelia arrived at their motel the next morning. Dean would have been irritated by her presence if it wasn’t for the way Sam smiled when he saw her. She seemed able to provide Sam with some comfort that Dean couldn’t, so he put up with her. It didn’t hurt that she’d brought breakfast with her.

They sat down at the table together and ate while Sam and Amelia discussed mutual friends. Dean felt a little out of the loop as he didn’t know any of the people they were discussing, so he concentrated on his food and plotting out a route to Santa Fe on the laptop.

It wasn’t until Sam explained to Amelia that they were leaving that day that Dean’s attention turned to them again.

“But why do you have to go?” Amelia asked plaintively.

“There’s a friend of ours,” Sam said. “He’s in trouble, and we need to see him.”

“What kind of trouble?”

Dean spoke up. “The kind you’re better off not knowing about.”

Amelia frowned but she didn’t argue. Dean guessed she was used to secrets after all her time with Sam. She’d admitted she knew hardly anything about him.

“How long will you be gone?” she asked.

Sam’s lips twisted into a moue of regret. “I don’t honestly know, Amelia. There are things we need to take care of and that might take a while. I might not make it back.”

Dean’s heart twisted painfully in his chest. Sam was talking so matter of fact about the possibility that he might not make it back here to see Amelia before the end. The fact there was an end at all made Dean feel sickened.

“You have to come back,” Amelia said.

Sam leaned forward in his chair and took Amelia’s hand in his. “You know I can’t promise that.”

She shook her head jerkily. “You can’t just… You have to come back. What are you going to do, spend your last days in some crappy motel?”

Sam sighed heavily and raked a hand over his face. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“That’s obvious,” she said cuttingly then her voice softened. “Don’t shut me out, Sam. I get what you’ve got to do is important, but you can’t...” She sighed. “There is always a room for you with me. When it’s time, you can come be with me.”

Dean’s hands fisted on the tabletop. He didn’t want to think about this, his brother’s last days, he couldn’t. He couldn’t let his mind travel that path as he didn’t think he would be able to stay strong if he did. And he needed to be strong, Sam needed him.

Sam stayed silent for a long time, staring down at the tabletop. Dean expected him to argue with Amelia, to tell her he wasn’t coming back, but as usual, Sam caught him off guard. “I’ll come back if I can.”

Amelia blinked and a tear slipped down her cheek. “You promise?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, if I can, I will be here when it’s time.”

xXx

The address Kevin had given them led to an abandoned building on the outskirts of a small town called Stanley. From the sign above the door, they saw that it was once a diner called Olly’s. The paint was peeling from the clapboard walls and the windows were crusted with dirt. It didn’t look like anyone was home, but Dean guessed if this was where Kevin and his mom had taken refuge, it would look like that.

“What do you think?” Dean asked. “Is the little nerd scamming us again?”

Sam started as if he had been lost in thought. He peered through the windshield at the building and shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” He swung open the door and unfolded his tall frame from the seat. Dean climbed out too and they made their way to the door. Dean raised a fist and hammered on it, shouting Kevin’s name.

There was the sound of locks disengaging and the door opened a crack. Dean had a moment’s relief, Kevin was there, and then he sputtered as he was doused with a stream of water. He jerked back and rubbed the water from his eyes; at his side, Sam was doing the same. The door swung open and Kevin was revealed standing in the doorway. In his hands was a monster-sized water-gun.

“We’re not demons,” Dean said bitterly.

Kevin moved back to let them inside and they stepped into the grungy diner. There was dust and other disgusting looking substances covering most of the tables, but the counter had been cleaned recently. Standing behind the counter was Mrs. Tran, and she didn’t look remotely happy to see them again. Dean didn’t much care whether she was happy or not, he had more pressing concerns. Such as the man standing beside him wiping the water out of his eyes.

“You okay, Sam?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “I’m fine.”

Kevin bolted the door again and then moved over to the counter where there was a large jug of some industrial cleaner that Dean would have bet the Impala contained Borax.

Sam rooted through his pockets and pulled out his penknife. “I’m guessing you want to do all the checks.”

Kevin nodded.

Sam pulled up his shirtsleeve and cut across his arm, drawing a trickle of blood from the wound. He wiped the blade on his sleeve and then handed the knife to Dean. Dean cut his own arm and then reached for the container of cleaner. He splashed it over his hand and then Sam did the same.

“Okay,” Mrs. Tran said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’re satisfied you’re not demons or Leviathans, but that doesn’t mean you’re not trouble.” She turned to Sam. “I’m sorry to hear that you’re sick, but what exactly do you think my son can do help?”

Dean scowled at her but Sam smiled reluctantly. “To help me? Not a thing. I know that better than anyone.”

“Then what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Trying to help your son,” Sam said. “I know you want what’s best for him, and that means getting back to his old life, but there is no chance of that without Crowley still looking for him. There’s only one way to deal with him, and that’s closing him up in Hell. You want to do that, you need our help. How are you even going to find the demon tablet without us?”

Mrs. Tran eyed Sam for a moment, and then nodded to Kevin. He grinned and reached under the counter for something. He brandished it with a triumphant smile.

“Is that the…?” Dean began.

“Yep,” Kevin said. “It’s the tablet.”

“How the hell did you get that?” Dean asked.

Kevin grinned. “That’s a long story.”

Dean pulled a chair round from one of the table and sat down, resting an ankle on his knee. “Have at it then. Tell us all about it.”

Sam sat beside Dean, and Dean noticed the fact his hands were shaking slightly on his lap. His eyes were alight with excitement that finding the tablet had brought them though, and he looked so vital and alive that Dean didn’t want to spoil it with a question about how he was doing.

Kevin leaned back against the counter and his mother came to stand beside him. Slowly, and with many interruptions, the story was told.

After Kevin and his mother had gone on the run from Sam and Dean, they’d been captured once more, this time by the angels—Dean had to stifle an ‘I told you so’ at that revelation. Kevin had seen the angel banishing sigil being used before, and his freaky AP brain had stored it away for future knowledge, but he hadn’t used it at the time as he figured he and his mother were safer with angels than they would be if Crowley had them.

“Then Naomi came,” Kevin said darkly. “And it went to hell from there,”

Naomi was a heavy-hitter, apparently, and she’d brought him the tablet to translate. When he seemed opposed to helping them out, she’d used Mrs. Tran to motivate him.

Sam turned to Mrs. Tran, shock coloring his features. “They hurt you?”

She nodded mutely.

Dean didn’t know why he was surprised. With the exception of Castiel—who on occasion had screwed them over—the angels were heavy-weight douche bags.

The next time Kevin and his mother had been left alone, they made their plan. After a particularly motivational session with Naomi, Kevin had made a ruckus, shouting that his mother was sick. When the angels had come running, he’d used the sigil to send them to wherever it was they went when they’d been blasted away. Alone for the first time, he and his mother had grabbed the tablet and made a run for it, stealing a car and driving till they hit somewhere hopeful.

“And you’ve been hiding out here ever since?” Dean asked.

Kevin shook his head. “We move along every couple of weeks, constantly on the move.”

“And you got Dean’s call.” Sam said tiredly.

Dean’s eyes snapped to him. Though his eyes still held the elation of before, they were at half-mast now, and he was pale. Sam caught him looking and shook his head slightly, which Dean took as an instruction to stow his worry and get things over with the Trans.

“We got your call,” Kevin said.

“So, now you know where we are, what are you going to do to protect my son?” Mrs. Tran asked.

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance. Dean knew what they needed; protection in the form of a hunter. Dean would have liked to be that hunter but there was something more important for him to do: take care of Sam. There was another option, but it wasn’t one he was racing towards with open arms and an expectant smile. It was the only other option though, so he had to go with it.

“There’s another hunter we’re going to take you to,” he said. “His name’s Garth. He’s a little out there, but he’s good at what he does and he’ll be able to keep you safe.”

“Garth!” Sam said. “You really think…”

“He’s all there is. You might not have noticed it, Sam, but hunters are hard to come by these days. We’re all out of friends, and the heavenly help has shown they’re not to be trusted. We can’t do it, Sam. We’ve got to get you back to the hospital fast.”

Sam looked like he wanted to argue, but Dean cut him off.

“We had a deal. You said if I got you Kevin and the tablet you’d get treatment. Guess what? Kevin’s here, and he’s got the tablet. It’s time for you to hold up your end.”

“I will. But you don’t have to be there. You can go with Kevin and keep him safe while I…” He trailed of as he caught Dean’s glare.

“I’m not leaving you,” Dean said through gritted teeth. “So you can forget that now. Garth will be with Kevin and you and me are going back to Kermit.”

Sam bowed his head and his hair fell down to cover his eyes. Dean waited for him to argue again, to come up with some other reason Dean couldn’t be there, but it didn’t happen. Sam looked up with bloodshot eyes and forced a smile. “I guess we better get going then.”


	6. Chapter 6

Despite Dean’s protests, Sam eventually managed to persuade him to take the Trans to Garth in person before coming to Kermit. Sam needed to make they were safely delivered before he could concentrate on himself. It wasn’t selflessness that motivated him, but duty. They had a duty to Kevin and his mother something he’d failed the year before, and he wasn’t going to fail again. Dean’s agreement was on the proviso that Sam go to Kermit ahead of him and get the treatment started. So, Sam stole a crapped out Ford and made the drive alone.

He called Doctor Jacobsen from the road and told him he was coming back, so the doctor was waiting for him on the ward when he stepped off the elevator. When he saw Sam, he stepped forward with a hand extended and a warm smile in place. “Good to see you again, Sam,” he said. “We’ve got a room prepared for you, and I have a few dozen forms for you to fill out before we can get started.”

Sam allowed himself to be led down the hall and into one of the patient rooms he had become horribly familiar with during the last year. It was a nice enough room, with pale blue walls and a large window, but it was what it represented that Sam hated. It meant days of sickness and pain and being alone. This time it would be different, Dean would be here soon, but somehow that was worse. Dean would be there to see the ugly side of it all and there was little Sam wanted less.

He dropped his duffel down on the end of the bed and crossed to the window. Doctor Jacobsen was talking but Sam wasn’t really listening. He was silently cursing the deal he’d made that brought him back here. He should be on the road, fighting and making a difference. From here on out he was going to be next to useless, and people were going to die because of it. If there was chance that the treatment would work, that he could be cured, he would have been happier to take the time out of what mattered. But it couldn’t work. It was too late. He was dying. The only thing he was going to gain now was time for his brother to come to terms with the end before it happened.

“Sam!” the doctor barked, and Sam spun to face him, looking abashed at being caught out.

“Sorry.”

Doctor Jacobsen sighed. “You’ve got a lot on your mind, I know that, but this is important, Sam. Please sit down so we can talk.” Sam took the chair beside the bed and the doctor pulled around the hard chair from the corner. “Okay, I know you’ve been here before, but we’re going with chemotherapy now, so things are going to be a little different. I will send in a nurse to set you up with a line and draw blood so we can check everything’s okay for us to proceed. If things are okay, we’ll start your chemotherapy tomorrow. Ordinarily you would be given round of chemo stretched out over weeks or months, with a break at the end. We can’t do that with you, Sam. We need to be aggressive, so you will be started on a five day round of sessions with two days rest before starting again. This is going to be hard on you, but it’s the only option we have open to us.”

“Okay, doc.”

Doctor Jacobsen sighed and tightened his grip on the clipboard in his hands. “Sam, I need to make sure you understand; we’re not curing you, we’re extending your time left.”

Sam nodded. “I know. Trust me, I know.”

“And are you sure this is what you want? I won’t lie, Sam; this is going to be a hard road for you to travel. I want you to have the treatment, because I want to give you as long as I can, but that’s the doctor in me talking. The person in me wonders if this is the right thing.”

Sam raked a hand over his face. “You met my brother. He needs this. I have made peace with what’s happening to me, and I’m okay, but he hasn’t yet. He needs this time to come to terms with it. If I quit now and let nature take its course, I would be leaving too big a hole for him. I have to fight as long as I can. Anything less than that would be a betrayal.”

“Okay.” The doctor nodded. “Then I’ll send someone in to get your bloods and then we can get to work. If I were you, I’d make the most of tonight. Eat a good meal and rest as much as you can.”

What he didn’t say but what Sam heard was that he needed to do that now, as he wouldn’t be able to soon.

xXx

Sam had forgotten how noisy the hospital could be. He was used to traffic at night moving past whatever motel they’d chosen for the night and the soft sighs of Dean’s snores. Those sounds were practically a lullaby to him. They were gone though, replaced with footsteps, the clatter of a trolley being moved and, in the morning, the sound of people waking and moving around the hall. Sam rolled over and rubbed at his eyes. He hadn’t slept that well, though that couldn’t all be blamed on the noise. It was the reality of what he was facing the next day that had him staring at the ceiling into the early hours of the morning.

In a way, he was glad Dean wasn’t there to see just how scared he was. It would only make it harder for him to deal with what was happening if he had to play at being strong for his brother. He’d spoken to him the night before, getting the irritated rundown on just how difficult Mrs. Tran was to deal with on long journeys and how Kevin had a sensitive stomach not suited to road trips. In return, he had told Dean about Amelia’s visit the evening before, bringing dinner with her, and the prep they’d done for his first chemo session. Dean had asked a lot of questions, only some of which Sam had an answer to, and he suspected Doctor Jacobsen was going to get the third degree from Dean when he arrived.

There was a knock on the door and Sam pushed himself round to sit on the edge of the bed before calling enter. Max, one of the nurses Sam knew from his time in the hospital before, came in with a hand extended.

“Sam, good to see you. I heard you were checking in again.”

They shook hands and Sam smiled. He liked Max. He was a good guy and knew his work well, as did most of the people he’d met during his treatment. He’d been the one to talk Sam through the side-effects of his radiotherapy in simple terms, and he’d been able to ease the early panic Sam’d had when they began.

Max picked up the chart from the end of Sam’s bed and flicked through it. “Now, Doctor Jacobsen is just authorizing your first dose. I just need to run through a few checks and go through any questions you might have.”

Sam was a veteran at the checks needed, so he sat patiently on the edge of the bed as Max checked his pulse and blood pressure, temperature and IV line. When it was done, he moved to sit on the chair beside the bed and waited for Max to finish filling out his chart.

“All good,” Max said. “You’re going to want to eat something light and then we’ll be ready to start.”

“Do I have to eat?” Sam asked.

Max sighed. “I know what you’re thinking, Sam. The less you eat now, the less you might lose later, but it doesn’t work like that. Trust me you want something in your stomach. Besides, you’ve got to fuel your body now more than ever. What’s coming is going to be tough and you need to give yourself all the help you can.”

“Okay,” Sam said reluctantly. His stomach was already full of butterflies. He could face down a ghost or demon or vampire without fear, but faced with the prospect of what was to come, he was scared. He knew suffering, he’d become close acquaintances with it over his life, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to go through it all again. The one reprieve he had was that his brother wasn’t here to see it, not yet at least.

When his breakfast arrived, Max left and Sam forced down a serving of fruit. He was sipping coffee when Doctor Jacobsen came back with an IV bag in hand.

“You ready for this, Sam?” he asked.

Sam wasn’t remotely ready. He didn’t think he ever would be, but he was going to do it anyway. This was what Dean needed from him, and given that he had already let his brother down so many times before, he wouldn’t this time.

Doctor Jacobsen hung the IV bag on the hook and connected it to Sam’s cannula in the back of his hand. Sam watched carefully as he opened the clip holding back the fluid, and his eyes tracked the run of liquid as it flowed through the tube and into his hand. He thought it should feel different, the poison entering his bloodstream, but there was nothing. It didn’t feel like anything. There was no pain or burn as he’d expected. He might well have been given saline for all the difference it made.

“Okay, there you go,” the doctor said. “I’ll leave you in peace.” He set the call button within Sam’s reach and patted his shoulder. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.”

Sam lifted his gaze from the IV in his hand and looked at the doctor. “I will.”

Doctor Jacobsen gave him a searching look and then walked out of the room, leaving Sam alone. Sam felt very alone. It wasn’t that he wanted the doctor to stay, he had other things to do, people to take care of, but he didn’t want to be alone. In a childish way, he almost believed that having the doctor there would keep the bad away. Shaking his head and dispelling the stupid thought, he picked up his phone and dialed Dean’s number.

His answer was swift and concerned. “Sammy?” Sam didn’t speak for a moment; he just drew comfort in the familiar voice. The doctor was gone, but Dean was there. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound it. What’s happening?”

“They just started the chemo,” Sam said.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Fine,” Sam said honestly. He didn’t feel physically any different. It was emotionally that he was struggling, and he wasn’t going to tell his brother that.

“Well, that’s good I guess.” There were indistinct voices on the line, and Sam wondered which of the Trans was interrupting their conversation. “Look, Sammy, I’m going to have to go,” Dean said. “I’ll call you up as soon as I can. We’re just coming into Missouri now, so I’ll be with you soon. I’ll drop them off and get back you.”

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam said. “Get them taken care of first.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be with you tomorrow.”

Sam knew there was no point arguing, so he didn’t try. He just said goodbye and let the phone drop onto the table again. He picked up one of the pamphlets he’d been given the day before that gave him a rundown of what to expect from chemotherapy, and waited for something to happen.

xXx

Something did happen. It took a few hours for the effects to start, and though he thought he was prepared, he soon learned there was no possible. It was the headache that came first, and that was familiar. He used to deal with them by lying in the dark and not moving more than was necessary to breath, but when the nausea started, he couldn’t not move.

He had planned to deal with it alone, not calling on Max or his colleagues to fix him up, but that resolve had barely lasted ten minutes before his hand grabbed for the call button while the other gripped the emesis basin to his chest.

Max came in, bringing with him the cool calmness he personified, and assessed the scene. Sam’s sickness was obvious, but the pain was less so, so Sam was surprised when he knew to close the blind and dim the light.

“Okay, Sam,” he said gently, “let’s get you back into bed.”

He eased a hand under Sam’s elbow and helped him stand. Groaning quietly, Sam allowed himself to be moved into the bed and covered with the blanket. The emesis basin was exchanged for a new one, and Sam curled over himself, waiting for the next round of cramps to come.

“I’ll get you something for the pain and something for your stomach,” Max said. “You be okay for a minute?”

Eyes squeezed shut, Sam nodded. He heard the door open and click closed again, and he lay in silence, waiting for Max’s return with the promised help.

When Max returned, he cracked his eyes open, and watched as Max tore open a plastic package. “This is an antiemetic patch,” he said. “I’ll help with the nausea, and I’m going to have to start a new IV in your arm to give you some pain meds. The one you’ve got is kinda occupied right now."

Sam extended his arm and waited for the inevitable pinch of the needle being inserted.

“How bad’s the pain?” Max asked.

“Seven,” Sam said through gritted teeth. “Maybe eight.”

“Okay,” Max said gently. “We’ll take care of that for you.”

Sam watched as he depressed the plunger of the syringe and soon after felt the warmth of the drugs soothing his ragged nerves. He knew the pain would be dulled soon, lowered to a level that would enable him to think through it and remember what this was all for.

His eyes slipped closed again, and he felt a hand pat his shoulder. “That’s it, you rest. I’ll just sit for a while.”


	7. Chapter 7

**_Chapter Eight_ **

 

With all the weapons in his arsenal—the most powerful of which was the fact he was actually dying—Sam persuaded Dean to drive the Trans to Garth’s houseboat before joining him in Texas. It took a few days to get them to Missouri and settled in and then to get himself back to Kermit, and he spent the hours tearing up roads to get back to his brother while calling him as often as he could get away with. Sam sounded okay, maybe a little tired on the phone, but he was good at playing things down to avoid worrying Dean, his recent diagnosis was a prime example of that, and Dean didn’t feel he could relax properly until he was with his brother.

It was three days after they separated in Santa Fe that Dean pulled the Impala to a halt in the parking lot of the Winkler County Memorial Hospital. He climbed out and slammed the door closed, crossing the lot in long strides. The last time he’d spoken to Sam on the phone, the day before, his brother had played down the apathy in his voice as tiredness, but Dean suspected there was more to it than that, and he wanted to see Sam now to find out what was happening.

His hurry to get to Sam was curtailed slightly by the fact that, in all their calls, he’d not asked which floor or room Sam was in, and he’d been too consumed by worry last time he was here to pay attention. He spoke to a woman at the main reception desk and she directed him to the third floor, oncology—And didn’t that word just stick in his throat like a stone—and he made his way to the elevators at the end of the hall.

When the doors opened on the third floor, he looked around, getting his bearings. One side of the hall seemed to be given over to patient rooms, each with a plate declaring the number on the door and a small window. The other side had the nurse’s station and a seating area with uncomfortable looking chairs and couches.

A door opened along the hall and Dean recognized Sam’s doctor, Doctor Jacobsen. He caught sight of Dean loitering near the elevator and walked over to him, extending a hand to shake. “Dean.”

Dean shook his hand. “How’s Sam doing?”

“He’s doing well all things considered.” He led Dean along the hall and they came to a stop outside of one of the rooms.

Dean peered through the window and recognized Sam’s form curled in the bed. “Doing well?” he said doubtfully.

The doctor sighed. “All things considered. He’s not in so much pain today as his headaches are being managed better by the IV meds. He’s in the middle of a chemotherapy cycle, so that’s wearing him down. He’s given me free rein to keep you informed of all aspects of his treatment, so is there anything you want to know?”

There was plenty Dean wanted to know, but he wanted to be with his brother more, so he stowed his questions for the moment and shook his head. “I’ll catch you later, Doc. Right now, I kinda want to see Sam.”

Doctor Jacobsen nodded and stepped back. “I’ll be here till six-thirty, so have someone page me if you need me.”

Dean eased open the door and let himself in. He heard Sam’s soft breaths and knew he was sleeping, so he moved across the room quietly, and rounded the bed to face Sam. His first conscious though, that he banished quickly, was that Sam looked like he was _really_ dying now. For the first time, he looked as sick as the doctors and Amelia claimed. His skin was a waxy grey and his eyes were circled by dark shadows. The hand that was curled in the blanket under his chin was shaking slightly, even though his face was relaxed into sleep.

There was a plush chair beside the bed, and Dean sank down into it with a sigh. He tried not to compare Sam’s appearance now with the man he’d said goodbye to only days ago, but his mind was not cooperative. He couldn’t help but think Sam was better before he had started the treatment. He remembered what Sam had said—‘ _I was sick all the time and so tired all I wanted to do was sleep. That was just radiation. Chemotherapy will be even worse.’—_ but he hadn’t really accepted it as truth until now. And that was after just days of treatment. What would it be like when Sam was weeks into it?

A lump formed in his throat at the horror of his potential future and gasped. The sound was soft, but it broke through Sam’s rest, and his eyes cracked open. If Sam sleeping looked bad, Sam waking looked even worse. His eyes were bloodshot and sagging, and if possible, he looked even paler.

He smiled slightly as he saw Dean and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “I know, I look awesome, right?”

Dean had a hundred things he wanted to say. He wanted to apologize for forcing Sam into this, for not realizing he was sick sooner, for blaming him for his ‘normal life’ while Dean was in Purgatory. He wanted to shout at Sam for not sticking with the treatment when it’d had a chance at actually helping him. He wanted to ask if there was anything, _anything,_ he could do, but he couldn’t bring the words to his lips. Instead, he said, “Not nearly as awesome as me,” and grinned.

Sam eased himself to a sitting position and then almost immediately folded in on himself. “Sick!” he groaned, and Dean just had time to grab the bowl from the table and get it under his brother’s mouth before Sam lost whatever it was he’d managed to eat that day. When the sickness passed, Sam sagged back against the pillows and wiped at his mouth.

“You need anything?” Dean asked, desperate for any way to help.

“Mouthwash. Bathroom.”

Glad of an excuse to leave his brother for a moment, free to react, Dean retrieved the bottle from the edge of the sink and brought it to his brother. Sam uncapped it, rinsed his mouth, and spat into the bowl. Sagging back against the pillows again, he forced a smile. “Thanks, man.”

Dean didn’t know what to say. You’re welcome? No worries? He didn’t know what to say as he had a sinking feeling this was all his fault. He had forced Sam to get the treatment, and now he was suffering because of it.

xXx

“Okay, Sammy, you think you can make it back to the bed?” Dean asked, crouching behind his brother in the bathroom.

In response, Sam groaned, and Dean took that as a no. He dampened a facecloth in the sink and held it out to his brother. Sam took it in a shaking hand and wiped it over his face.

After a few minutes of cowering over the toilet, Sam pushed himself to his feet and moved to the sink. He rinsed with mouthwash and set the bottle down again.”Bed please,” he said hoarsely.

Dean helped him with an arm around his waist to struggle to the bed again. Only when his brother was safely deposited back on the bed and lying back against the pillows did Dean relax infinitesimally. For now, Sam was okay.

Sam was in his fourth week of treatment and they were back at the motel, given privacy but not support for a while. It had been Sam’s insistence that made them leave the sanctuary of the hospital, against Dean’s better judgment. If Dean’d had his way, Sam would have stayed there as long as he needed the treatment, but Sam had said he couldn’t stay there feeling worse than ever, so he’d helped persuade the doctors to release him.

The chemotherapy Sam was having could be given orally, so Sam only had to go to the hospital for his weekly blood draws and check-ups. Sam was on a five-day regimen for chemo with weekends given to rest and prepare for the next round. Dean looked forward to the weekends more than anything, as Sam had some brief reprieve from the side-effects. He wasn’t completely free of them, but they seemed easier to manage.

Sam curled up in the bed, hugging a pillow to his chest, and his eyes drooped. Dean knew he would be sleeping soon, so he clicked off the TV that was playing quietly in the background and sat on the edge of his own bed.

There was a light tap on the door and Dean bit back a groan with effort. He knew who it would be, and he didn’t want to deal with her today. He was exhausted after a night spent helping Sam and she would flutter about, making a nuisance of herself for a couple of hours before leaving them in peace. It was only the fact that Sam seemed to get something out of her visits that made him get to his feet and open the door for her.

“Amelia,” he said, forcing himself to at least sound civil.

“Hi, Dean.”

She was either oblivious to his disgruntlement or she was just a lot more polite than he was. She smiled and stepped around him to enter.

“He’s sleeping,” Dean said, as she stepped around the room to Sam’s bed. Sam chose that moment to disprove his words by pushing himself to a sitting position and smiling at her. She beamed at him, and perched on the edge of the bed, her hand reaching across the distance between them to hold his hand.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Not too bad,” Sam lied.

She seemed to know he was lying too, as she frowned and asked, “They’ve not found an antiemetic for you yet?”

He shook his head. “No, but it’s getting easier to deal with. Familiarity and all that.”

Amelia sighed sadly. “Are you eating?”

“Yeah,” Sam said easily. “All the broth and Ensure I could want.”

“Speaking of,” Dean said. “I need to make a supply run. You two good to hang here for a while.” What he was really asking was whether Amelia was good to stay until he got back. He didn’t want to leave Sam alone for longer that it took to use the bathroom these days.

“Yeah, I’ve closed down for the rest of the day,” Amelia said.

Sam looked disgruntled. “You didn’t need to do that.”

She patted his hand. “I know, but I wanted to see you, and there were no appointments this afternoon. I figured Roberta could do with an early release, too.”

Dean cleared his throat, drawing Sam’s eyes to him. “You want anything special?”

Sam shook his head.

Dean sighed. He hoped, every time he asked that question, that Sam would come up with something other than soup and meal-replacement milkshakes that he would want to eat. His brother was dropping weight and that wasn’t good, as he didn’t have a lot to spare in the first place; his bulk was all muscle.

He grabbed the keys from the table by the door and gave his brother one last searching look, assuring himself that it was okay to leave him for a while. Sam smiled and then asked Amelia a question about someone named Riot—which Dean thought was an awesome name—so he left.

Closing the door softly behind him, Dean strode across the lot to the Impala. The kid that ran the motel, Sam’s friend, was just locking up a room further down the block. He caught Dean’s eye and walked towards him, and Dean knew what was coming—a list of questions about Sam—so he climbed in quickly behind the wheel and turned the keys in the ignition, shooting the kid an apologetic smile. He didn’t want to have to explain that Sam wasn’t doing too good, that he was sick all hours of the day, that he was scaring Dean now. He didn’t want to face those things, so he raised a hand in greeting as he passed and pulled out of the parking lot.

There was a Walgreens on the edge of town, and as Dean ambled along the aisles, he wondered at the direction his life had taken. From hunting down a way to close the gates of Hell to stocking up on meal replacement drinks for his ailing brother. It didn’t seem possible. When he was with Sam, taking care of him, time seemed to rush past and he didn’t think too hard on what was happening. When he was away from Sam, as well as worrying whether he was okay or not, he found himself slipping back into the life before. He scanned headlines at checkouts and searched for anything that might be in their line of work, then he would remember, and his heart would clench. Sam was sick. Sam was really sick. Sam was… He couldn’t let that thought finish. He had to fight reality back with every moment to save himself from losing his mind altogether. He could only handle so much.

He picked up a crate of vanilla flavored Ensure from the bottom shelf. Sam seemed to prefer the vanilla. He said it tasted slightly less awful than the others. Moving along the aisle, he came to the candy. He knew Sam should be eating as well as he could, but his weight loss worried Dean, and he figured if he could get some sugar into him, it might build him up again a little. He needed energy to fight.

When he got back to the motel, he found Sam fast asleep on the bed and Amelia darting around the room, picking up the detritus of their bags that had spread itself across the room. It wasn’t like they were living in squalor, but neither of them had been bothered with housekeeping lately. They were both too occupied with Sam’s sickness. She had picked up the clothes and folded them neatly on the end of Dean’s bed.

“You don’t need to do that,” Dean said, hurrying to pick up the shirt from the floor where he’d left it the night before.

She looked up and smiled a little. “He fell asleep about ten minutes ago and I ran out of things to read.”

Dean shook his head. “Look, Amelia, I appreciate it, but we can take care of ourselves. We don’t need you picking up after us.”

She raised an eyebrow and Dean could practically feel the judgment rolling off her. It made him bristle.

“Okay, so I’ve not exactly been keeping things neat, but that’s what me and Sam are used to. He’s not going to care whether there are clothes on the floor.”

“That’s because it’s easier for you,” she said.

Dean snorted. “Believe me, there’s nothing easy about this situation for me.”

She raised her hands. “That’s not what I mean.” She sighed. “Before, Sam let me take care of him. He didn’t hide his suffering at all, and I could help. Now, he’s got you. He doesn’t need me to take care of him anymore, so he hides it all. I can tell how bad it is by looking at the two of you, and I can’t do anything. So I tidy and talk to him. I tell him about people we know and hope that taking his mind off what’s happening will do something useful. Before, it was easier. Now, it’s so much harder, so I clean up.”

Dean shook his head. It did make sense in a warped kind of way. He knew how he’d feel if Sam refused to let him help. He had tried at first, when Dean arrived in the hospital, but that stopped pretty much the same time as the next day of chemotherapy and sickness started. There were times in there that Dean didn’t think Sam even recognized his brother as the person that was fetching him washcloths and water. When Sam had become aware enough to be care again, he seemed to accept Dean’s help as inevitable. Remembering those early days, made Dean feel a little sympathetic to Amelia’s plight.

“He needs you,” he said grudgingly. “I think you help him feel normal. He’s trying so damn hard to be strong and treat this like it’s nothing, but he can’t do that with me, because I’m seeing it all. With you, he can pretend that he’s doing better.”

“But he isn’t,” she said sadly.

Dean looked at his sleeping brother, with his pale skin and shadowed eyes, and shook his head. “No, he really isn’t.”


	8. Chapter 8

They knew better. They’d both read the pamphlets and listened to the doctor’s warnings. If there were any signs of infection, _any signs,_ they were to come back to the hospital straight away. But it was late into the night when Dean noticed Sam’s temperature, and they were both exhausted, so they agreed to go to the hospital first thing in the morning to get Sam checked over. It was just a matter of hours. That shouldn’t make a difference, right?

They were wrong.

Dean had fallen into a fitful sleep, listening for his brother even while resting, and Sam had crashed out on the other bed. Only a few hours passed before Dean jerked awake, not sure what had woken him at first, until he heard the sound of Sam’s labored breathing. He threw himself out of bed and hurried to the side of Sam’s bed.

“Sam! Hey, Sammy, you okay?”

Sam shook his head. “Think…” He drew a shuddering breath. “Need hospital.”

That much was obvious, Dean thought. He yanked on a pair of jeans and sweatshirt and helped Sam to sit on the edge of the bed. “You going to manage to get to the car, or should I call an ambulance?”

“Car,” Sam said firmly.

He seemed to be having trouble getting a deep enough breath, and the sound of the wheezing coming from his brother’s lungs had Dean tensed. With assistance, Sam got to his feet, and then his real condition became obvious. He was struggling to stand and his frame was rocked with tremors. He could feel the heat radiating from Sam’s skin, but the way he hugged his arms around himself made Dean sure he was suffering with chills. Sam reached for the blanket on the bed, but Dean pulled his hand away.

“I know you’re cold, but you’re running a fever, so we can’t bundle you up.”

“Cold,” Sam said, and there was something childlike about his tone that scared Dean. He could have jumped back twenty-five years to the time Sam had flu that had landed him in the hospital in the end with pneumonia. He prayed it wasn’t that again.

“I know,” Dean said. “But we’ve got to bring your fever down. They’ll know what to do at the hospital.”

Struggling like a bizarre three-legged race, Sam and Dean got out to the car, and Dean settled Sam in the passenger side of the bench seat. As soon as Dean eased the door closed, Sam slumped against the window and closed his eyes, still trying to draw those wheezing breaths. Dean slid in behind the wheel and gunned the engine, reaching over and patting Sam’s arm. “You’ll be fine, Sam. They’ll know what to do.” He didn’t know whether his words were reassuring Sam, but they were doing nothing for him.

The hospital wasn’t far from the motel, though it seemed much too far for Dean in that moment, and they were soon pulling into the no waiting zone in front of the ER.

He deliberated for less than a second about what to do next. From the looks of it, there was no way Sam was going to get into the hospital under his own steam, so he hurried through the main door of the ER and grabbed the first person in scrubs that he saw. “My brother, he’s sick. I can’t get him in.”

“Okay, sir. I’m Mark,” the man he’d grabbed said calmly. “Where is your brother now?”

“In the car.”

The man turned to the woman sitting behind the reception desk. “Get someone to bring me out a gurney.”

The woman disappeared and Dean hurried back through the exit to the car. Sam was blinking drowsily and still sagging against the door. Dean climbed in the driver side and knelt on the seat. “Sammy, we’ve got to get you out, okay?”

Sam eased himself away from the door and sat up, listing towards Dean now. Dean supported him with a hand on the shoulder, and watched as a nurse came out wheeling a gurney. Mark eased the door open and helped Sam to turn with his feet planted on the asphalt. Between them they got Sam straight and then to perch on the edge of the gurney. Sam’s last reserves of strength seemed to leave him with the change in position, and he slumped forward and would probably have hit the floor again if the nurse hadn’t caught his shoulders and eased him down. Dean scrambled out of the car and made for Sam’s side again.

“Sam!”

Sam’s head lolled toward Dean but he didn’t speak; he was still breathing those labored wheezes that made Dean feel sick.

The gurney was turned and directed to the door, and Dean tried to follow but the orderly laid a hand over his chest and held him back. “Sir, you need to move your car.”

“What?” Dean said, trying to make sense of the words while keeping Sam within his view.

“Your car. It’s blocking the ambulance bay. You need to move it.”

“But Sam…”

“I’ll stay with your brother until you get back,” he promised.

Hating himself, but knowing that he wasn’t going to be allowed near Sam again until he’d done it, he climbed back into the car and pulled out of the ambulance bay. Despite the late hour, it was still hard to find a parking spot, and it was five minutes before Dean was back in the ER. He hurried to the woman behind the desk to get directions to Sam, but before he reached her, the nurse that had helped them get Sam into the hospital before came through the doors and made straight for Dean. His heart contracted painfully at the sight of her striding towards him with a severe expression but when she saw his panic she smiled and Dean relaxed infinitesimally.

“He’s just through here,” she said.

Dean followed him through the door and into a long room flanked with beds, some curtained off and other’s open and empty. He looked at the curtains, wondering which hid Sam from him, but he didn’t lead him to any of them. Instead, they came to a door at the end of the hall marked: _trauma bay one._

Sam was lying on the bed. His t-shirt had been removed and the head of the bed was raised so he was almost sitting. There were electrodes on his chest now and an oxygen mask covering his mouth. His breaths seemed to be coming easier though, and Dean clung to the improvement as a talisman against the pale skin and visible ribs—When had Sam got so thin?

He crossed the distance between them and reached out to hold Sam’s forearm. At his touch, Sam’s eyes opened and rolled towards Dean. It could have been wishful thinking, but Dean thought Sam looked more relaxed when he saw him.

A throat was cleared and Dean turned to see a man in pale green scrubs. “I’m Doctor Harrow,” he said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Dean raked a hand through his hair, wondering where to start. “He had a slight temperature last night, but we thought we’d get it checked out in the morning. He woke up a little while ago having trouble breathing. I brought him right here. He’s a patient on the…” He couldn’t make himself say it.

Sam tugged the mask away from his face and spoke in a whisper. “Brain tumor. Jacobsen. Chemo.”

Doctor Harrow nodded. “Okay. I’ll have Doctor Jacobsen notified of your admission. He’ll probably want you on the oncology ward. In the meantime, you stay on the oxygen and we’ll take some chest films.”

Sam nodded and pulled the mask back over his face. His eyes drifted to half mast again and his head tiled to the side.

“What do you think’s wrong with him, Doc?” Dean asked.

The doctor looked at him apologetically. “It sounds like a chest infection. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t worry too much, but given your brother’s diagnosis and chemotherapy…”

Dean closed his eyes. He knew what the doctor wasn’t saying.

xXx

It was a chest infection, and with the added benefits of Winchester luck and Sam’s depleted immune system, it turned into pneumonia pretty damn fast. Dean camped out in a reclining chair and waited it out with his brother. He knew the facts, Sam could not come back from this, but he knew his brother. Sam had beaten the Devil once, he would beat this. He wasn’t so stupid as to believe that getting through this would mean a cure for the other thing ailing his brother, it was a mere stay of execution, but it was enough. At least it had been enough before Sam made his latest damn fool decision.

Dean was in the bathroom attached to Sam’s room, cleaning himself up, when he heard Doctor Jacobsen’s voice rumble. He quickly dressed and made his way back into the room, running a hand through his damp hair, not wanting to miss what the Doctor was saying. He was hoping for good news, as Sam’s breathing had seemed easier in the night. What he didn’t expect was for Sam to have cast aside the oxygen mask and to be talking to the doctor as he sat with a clipboard on his lap as he read aloud from a official looking form.

“I request that all treatments other than those needed to keep me comfortable be discontinued or withheld and my physician allow me to die as—“

“What the hell?” Dean said sharply.

Sam looked up and Dean saw his ‘busted’ face.

His heart pounded in his ears and his hands fisted at his sides. “Sam,” he said in a tone of forced calm. “What are you doing?”

“Making plans,” Sam said weakly.

“Plans! I’m pretty sure I heard the words ‘allow me to die’, and they don’t sound like any plans you want to be making right now.”

Sam shook his head. “This is important, Dean. We need to talk about this.”

“Sure we do,” Dean said. “In a couple months, when it’s _time_ to talk. We’re not there yet.” They couldn’t be there yet. Dean wasn’t ready. “You’ve still got the chemo to finish.”

Doctor Jacobsen cleared his throat. “Sam and I have discussed this, and Sam has indicated that he doesn’t want to continue the chemotherapy regimen.”

Dean’s hands were shaking. “You’re quitting?”

“No,” Sam said plaintively. “It’s not doing any good, Dean. There’s no point continuing it now.” He turned to the doctor. “Tell him what you told me.”

The doctor sighed. “I’m afraid Sam’s right. We cannot start it now with Sam’s health as precarious as it is, and I am not convinced it was doing any good anyway.”

Dean’s breath whooshed out of him and he swayed on his feet. Doctor Jacobsen jumped to his feet and led Dean to the chair he’d just vacated. “Do you need some water?” he asked.

Dean shook his head. “I need to talk to my brother. Alone.”

Sam frowned. “Dean, I need to…”

“No!” Dean said brutally. “We’re going to talk alone.”

Doctor Jacobsen laid his clipboard on the table at the end of the bed and made for the door. Dean watched him go, and as the door clicked closed behind him, he rounded on Sam. “You’re giving up!” he accused.

“No, I’m not.” Sam said. “I’m just facing facts. The chemo isn’t giving me more time; it’s sapping the time I’ve got left. There’s new growths, more secondaries, and they’re going to keep coming with or without the chemo. I’m not giving up, but I’m not going to spend what time I have left sick and weak in a bed.”

Dean sat back in the chair and absorbed the news. “More cancer?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. It’s time to face the facts, Dean. This is what we’ve always known was coming. We need to make plans, and that’s what I was doing.”

Dean picked up the clipboard from the end of the bed and tore the pages free. He balled them up and tossed them onto the bed. “No! You’re not making plans to die. I won’t let you.”

Sam’s head flopped back against the pillows and the show of weakness made Dean’s anger surge even more. If the situation was different, he would slug his brother for this crap.

Sam seemed to know what he was thinking, as he raised an eyebrow and lifted his head slightly. “Hit me if it’ll make you feel better. Just remember you promised. You said when it was time, you’d let me go. It’s time now.”

Dean lurched to his feet, his hands fisted ready to strike. “It’s not time!”

Sam merely smiled knowingly at him and Dean’s anger spike. His hand struck out and slammed into the wall by the door. He felt something give way and his skin tore, smearing blood on the wall. When he turned back to his brother, he saw Sam’s smile had been replaced by a frown and wetness in the eyes.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he said softly.

Dean turned away from him and marched out of the door. He didn’t want to see his brother cry.

xXx

He didn’t know how long he sat in the Impala, watching people come and go through the hospital’s main entrance; he just knew he’d seen Amelia go in once and not come out yet. He made a deal with himself. He would go back to Sam as soon as she left. He wouldn’t let him be alone again.

When he’d got into the car, he’d had every intention of driving to the nearest liquor store and getting completely, numbingly drunk. But his fingers had refused to turn the key, and he’d sat bowed over the steering wheel for five minutes before he realized he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t be with his brother, but he couldn’t bear to leave him behind either. So he sat in the car, watching people move through their lives, not knowing that his world was crashing down around him.

He saw the main doors open and Amelia came out. He sat up straight, waiting for her to make her exit so he could go back to Sam, but she didn’t leave. Her eyes scanned the parking lot and came to rest on him. With a look of determination, she strode towards him and pulled open the passenger side door. If he’d been thinking clearly, he would have locked the door or driven away, anything to get rid of her, but he hadn’t been thinking, so there was nothing he could do to stop her sliding into the seat beside him.

“Amelia,” he said stiffly.

In contrast to his tension, she seemed relaxed. “Dean.”

“How is he?”

“Tired, upset, thinking you’re going to leave him, and in pain,” she said.

“He’s hurting?”

“That’s what cancer does,” Amelia said. “It hurts.”

Dean opened the door and was about to get out, to go back to Sam, when she spoke again.

“You know why I chose to become a vet and not a doctor?”

“All the fluffy puppies,” Dean said sarcastically.

She pushed her hair back from her face. “No. I couldn’t treat people knowing we let them suffer. With animals there’s mercy.”

Dean spoke through gritted teeth. “So, if you had your way, you’d put Sam down like a dog?”

She relaxed back in her seat and spoke calmly, though Dean had expected her to be angry or at least affronted. “Not yet I wouldn’t.”

Dean couldn’t be near her; he had to get away from her and her twisted morality. He had to get away from the woman that said she’d kill his brother. He pushed open the car door and climbed out, but she followed him, catching his arm as he made for the entrance again.

“Wait,” she said earnestly. “I need to talk to you.”

“You think… I can’t… You want to kill him!”

“I don’t want Sam to die,” she said, and there was no denying the sincerity in her tone. “I love him. I love him enough to let him go without making him suffer more than is necessary.”

“You think I want him to suffer!” Dean growled. “Everything I’ve ever done is to stop Sam suffering. You don’t know me, you don’t know us, but believe me I’ve tried.”

“What’s coming for Sam is going to be hard, for him and you, and you’re making it more difficult by reacting like this. You need to be there for him, not make it worse by punching walls and walking away.”

Dean looked down at his bloodied and sore knuckles. He didn’t want to hear this, not from Amelia, but he had a sneaking suspicion that she was right. It couldn’t have helped Sam to see him brother losing his temper and lashing out, but what was the alternative? To sit with him and help him fill out the forms that would essentially kill him? He couldn’t do that, could he? Was that what Sam needed from him now?

He leaned against the hood on the Impala and she came to stand beside him. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked.

“You need to go back to him and talk. Let him explain what’s happening. He is waiting for you. Sam will always wait for you. While he can,” she amended.

Dean raked a hand over his face, hating the implication of her words. Sam would wait as long as he could, but he could only hold on for so long, only as long as he lived. Even now, Dean was wasting vital minutes with him in favor of nursing his own feelings. Sam needed him and here he was, hiding. He pushed away from the hood and walked to the main entrance again. He felt Amelia’s eyes on him as he walked, but he didn’t turn. He didn’t need her now, he needed Sam.

When he got back to the room, Sam’s eyes were closed and his breathing soft, he was sleeping, but as Dean sank down into the chair beside him, he woke and looked tentatively at his brother.

“Sam, I’m sorry,” Dean began before Sam could speak. “I shouldn’t have left.”

Sam licked his lips. “And I shouldn’t have started moving on with those forms without talking to you first.”

Dean saw the clipboard on the table and noticed that there were fresh forms clipped onto it. They weren’t filled out though, and that gave him some small measure of relief.

“It’s an advanced directive,” Sam said, seeing where his gaze lay. “It just means I get to have some say in what happens to me at the end. It’s not like they’ll kill me.”

“But they won’t save you.”

“Dean, nothing can save me now,” Sam said sadly.

Dean sighed. “It’s really time for this?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah.”

Dean closed his eyes for a moment, willing the tears back. “How long?”

“I don’t know. Doc says the antibiotics are working and my lungs are clearing. That’s good, but it’s not the answer. Things are still moving on, and the time is coming soon.”

Dean swallowed thickly. “Amelia said you are in pain. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would be the point?” Sam asked. “You and I have both had worse, and the meds are helping now.”

“I should have know. I should have realized. I could have helped.”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter now. You can still help me.”

“Anything,” Dean promised.

“I need help with these forms,” Sam said, gesturing to the clipboard.

Dean reached over and picked up the clipboard. Taking a deep breath, he began to read the first section. “If, in the judgment of my physician, I am suffering with an irreversible condition so that I cannot care for myself or make decisions for myself and am expected to die without life-sustaining treatment provided in accordance with prevailing standards of care…”

“I request that my physician allow me to die as gently as possible.”

Dean closed his eyes for a moment and a tear slipped down his cheek. “Okay, Sammy, as gently as possible,” he agreed.


	9. Chapter 9

At first, Dean thought it had all been some wonderful mistake and that Sam was going to be okay after all. After the pneumonia had cleared, Sam seemed to improve fast without the chemo. He wasn’t sick all the time anymore and he had energy to do things like walk to the diner from the motel. For a few weeks, Dean really thought things were going to be okay. Sure he was in pain, and he relied on the meds more than ever, but he was dealing. Then the headaches started, and the meds didn’t seem enough anymore. Sam spent more and more days lying in the dark, curled over his pillow and hiding from the world. Even on the days he wasn’t in pain, he didn’t have the energy to walk far anymore.

Dean was starting to understand that they really were nearing the end.

That thought terrified him, and he was frequently overwhelmed with panic, but in contrast, Sam seemed almost Zen about his fate. Dean didn’t believe he wanted to die, but he had made peace with what was coming and was dealing with it. It should have helped him, to know his brother wasn’t scared, but he was terrified of what was going to happen to him when Sam was gone. For the first time in his life, he would be truly alone. His parents were gone, there was no Bobby or Cas, no Ellen or Jo, even Lisa and Ben were beyond his reach now. He had lost almost everyone he had ever loved, and the last person left was slipping away, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to save him.

He had promised.

xXx

Dean had known something big was coming, but he had consoled himself that nothing could be worse than what he’d already heard and seen, so he was completely unprepared for Amelia’s offer.

“You want us to what?” he asked loudly.

Amelia cast a glance over to Sam’s restlessly sleeping form and she gestured to the door. Dean followed her out of the motel room and onto the asphalt parking lot. She leaned against the wall and spoke softly. “I want you to come to stay with me.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because Sam is running out of time now, and unless you want him to…” She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. “Unless you want it to happen in a motel on the road, you need to move him while you can. Soon, he’ll be too sick to make the journey.”

Dean shook his head. “We’re not there yet.”

She looked at him sympathetically. “We are, Dean.”

Dean swallowed thickly and cleared his throat. “How long?” He hated that he was asking the question, especially of her, but he needed to know.

“I'm not sure. Sam seemed to think it would be soon–“

“You mean he’s been talking to you about this?” Dean bit out.

She nodded serenely. “He seems to think it will be soon, and I am inclined to agree. He’s seeing Doctor Jacobsen today, isn’t he? I think he will be able to give us a better gauge of how things are happening. However long it is, Sam needs to be moved soon. You have seen how he is already drifting.”

That was true. In the past week, Sam had remained in or on the bed and Dean hadn’t been able to tempt him out of the motel room at all. He seemed most comfortable when he was lying in the dimly lit room, riding the waves of pain out with the medication.

Dean hated this more that he thought it was possible for him to hate anything. Azazel, Ruby, Lilith, Lucifer, Dick Roman, he’d have them all back at once if it meant he didn’t have to see his brother going through this, if he didn’t have to go through it, too.

He nodded. “Okay. I’ll talk to Sam when he’s awake, and if it’s what he wants, we’ll come stay with you.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Dean.”

“Just out of curiosity, but what’s your husband got to say about this?”

Amelia cast her eyes down. “Don understands. He’s taken a long haul job. He won’t be back for a month.”

“A month,” Dean said in a cracked voice.

Amelia laid a hand on his arm and his muscles tensed at the contact. “Yes, Dean, a month.”

Within a month Sam would be gone.

xXx

Sam was still resting when Dean went back into their room thirty minutes later. He’d gone for a walk around the block a few times to get a handle on his emotions before facing his brother, even asleep. He didn’t want to make it any harder for Sam than it already was, and going back in there looking like his heart was breaking was going to do that. He had to be strong. There would be a time to lose his shit, but it wasn’t yet. Not while Sam was still there.

Amelia was gone, back to work, Dean guessed, so he stayed quiet as he rooted through Sam’s clothes, searching for something comfortable for him to wear for his hospital visit. It reminded him of all the times he’d done it when Sam was a child, setting out his clothes for the day when he had been a child himself. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Sam’s sickness was stealing his life, it was stealing his independence too. He needed help with the simplest things.

He was just searching for the mate of the boot he held in his hands when Sam woke. He moved slowly, like an old man, to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Morning, Sammy,” Dean said.

Sam smiled. “Morning.” He glanced at the starburst clock on the wall. “Huh, it’s late.”

“Yeah, but we’re good still,” Dean said. “You’ve got an hour before your appointment.”

Sam eased himself to his feet. He was shaky but he made it across the room.

“I sorted you some clothes,” Dean said, holding them out.

Sam smiled his thanks and took the bundle into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him but he didn’t lock it, for which Dean was grateful. A locked door wasn’t going to keep him out if Sam needed him, but it would be better if he didn’t have to break it down.

He heard the shower start up and he smiled. It was a better day than most if Sam was showering. Some days he had to make do with a facecloth while sitting on the edge of the tub because he didn’t have the strength to stand long enough.

He listened carefully for any sound that might portend Sam getting into trouble, but all was okay, and when Sam came out of the bathroom, barefoot but dressed, he looked okay. His cheeks were flushed and his damp hair was pushed back from his face. He staggered over to the bed and sat down, bending to pull his boot over to him.

“So,” Dean said, “Amelia came by this morning and we were talking.”

Sam looked abashed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah. She wants us to go stay with her, but you already knew that.”

Sam braced his hands on his knees and looked Dean in the eye. “It was an idea. We don’t have to do it if you’re going to be uncomfortable, but…”

“But you want it.” Dean said.               

“I don’t want you seeing me... I don’t want it to be a reminder, every time you check into a motel.”

Dean’s voice came out harsher than he intended. “If you think I’m not going to see that every time I close my eyes anyway…”

Sam jerked as if struck. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just want this to be as easy as possible.”

“Nothing about this is easy, Sam!”

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he said plaintively. “I really am.”

Dean’s anger evaporated like mist. As if this wasn’t already hard enough for Sam, he was making it much worse. “No, I’m sorry. I just… You want to be at Amelia’s?”

Sam nodded. “It’ll be good to be in someone’s home, even if it’s not ours.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Amelia says her husband will be out of town for a month."

That wasn’t what he really wanted to say. He couldn’t ask Sam the real question though. That was too much to ask of his self control. He didn’t want to break in front of his brother. It wasn’t time.

Sam heard the question in his voice anyway, and he looked sad. “Yeah, Dean, a month.”

Dean closed his eyes and nodded. He took a moment to marshal himself and then he clapped his hands on his knees. “Okay. We better get going if we’re going to make it to the hospital in time.”

He spotted Sam’s missing boot under the bed and he retrieved it and handed it to over. Sam took it and looked up into Dean’s eyes. “Thanks, Dean.”

Dean knew he wasn’t talking about the boot. He was thanking him for everything, and Dean felt like a dick. If anyone in this situation deserved thanks, it was Sam. He had fought on and suffered for Dean’s benefit. That was more than anyone else would have done.

Sam pulled on his boots and laced them and then stood. “Ready?”

Dean nodded dolefully. He was as ready as he’d ever be.

xXx

Sam had spent a lot of time in Doctor Jacobsen’s office, and he was yet to hear good news in it. He had no expectations this would be different, and he was not surprised.

They had gone over his advanced directive and care plan and now they were talking end-of-life care.

“I don’t want strangers,” Sam said.

He didn’t want people he didn’t know touching him when he wasn’t able to argue. He had been through too much pain in his life to want more, and he knew this was going to be painful, the least he could have was people he loved there with him.

“That’s understandable,” the doctor said. “Dean, do you agree?”

Dean started visibly. He had been slinking lower and lower into his chair with every word Sam and Doctor Jacobsen said, as if that could protect him from what they were saying. Now he straightened up and looked at Sam. “No strangers, right? That’s cool. Just tell me what I have to do.”

“It won’t be easy,” Doctor Jacobsen said. “Sam will need someone to take care of his personal needs. I know Amelia has said she will take care of your medication, but that still leaves work for you, Dean.”

“Whatever he needs,” Dean said. “I don’t need strangers doing what I can.”

Doctor Jacobsen smiled. “Okay. I will make arrangements for equipment and sundries to be delivered. Amelia has made an appointment to come in and talk about the medications, so…”

“So this is it,” Sam said.

Doctor Jacobsen nodded. “Unless you feel you need to see me again, this is it.”

Sam shook his head. “No. If Amelia is set with the meds we’re sorted.” He smiled. “Thanks for everything.”

Sam knew that without the Doctor’s help and insistence that Sam try everything he would never have made it so far. He probably wouldn’t have been around to see Dean when he got out of Purgatory. He would have been in the ground before Dean was back.

Doctor Jacobsen smiled and rose to his feet. “It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Sam.”

Sam got to shaky feet and shook the doctor’s proffered hand. “You, too.”

There was something sad about this last appointment, and not for the obvious reason. While it was sad that Sam was now beyond help and there was nothing the doctor could do for him anymore, it was worse that this was a goodbye. Sam was going to be saying goodbye to other people soon, people he loved.

Dean took his arm and together they made their way out of the office and back through the ward. Sam saw many familiar faces as he made his way along the hall slowly, and he smiled at them but didn’t stop to talk. He didn’t want to say more goodbyes in front of Dean. He looked like he was barely hanging on as it was.

That was the worst thing about what was happening, leaving Dean. Sam sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have died before Dean got out. It wouldn’t have been better for him, he was grateful for every minute longer he had with his brother, but perhaps Dean would have fared better if he didn’t have to see Sam failing slowly.

When they got out to the car, Dean opened the door for him and waited as he folded his tall form into the seat.

“You okay?” he asked.

Sam nodded and yawned. He was wiped and wanted to sleep, but he had to hang on a little longer. He needed to be awake enough to at least get back into his bed at the motel.

“Sleep, Sam,” Dean said gently. “I’ll wake you when we get back.”

Satisfied, Sam closed his eyes and drifted, trying not to react when he heard a shaky breath and sob from beside him.


	10. Chapter 10

The room Amelia set Sam up with was nice. The walls were painted a clean teal and the bedclothes matched. One wall had vast glass doors that led out onto the deck at the back of the house, visible from the bed. During the day, Dean threw open the curtains and let the light stream onto the bed where Sam rested. Dean had a room of his own, next-door to Sam’s, but he was barely in there. He preferred to sleep on the recliner in the corner of the room, where he could keep an eye on Sam.

Sam did not sleep at regular hours anymore. He slipped in and out throughout the day and night, and Dean matched his sleep to his, not wanting to miss any of Sam’s waking hours now there was so few.

It was early evening and Sam was sleeping, lying on his side with his arms curled around his pillow. Dean had just woken when he heard paws padding on the hall floor.

“Hey, boy,” he said as Riot nudged the door open with his nose and came into the room. Riot cast him a fleeting glance and jumped up onto the bed.

In the beginning, Dean had protested the dog’s presence, Sam’s body was trashed already, he didn’t need dog germs stealing his strength, but it seemed to make a difference to Sam to have him around, so he sucked it up and let it lie. It didn’t hurt that the dog’s arrival usually woke Sam and any time that Sam spent awake now was precious.

Riot eased his nose under Sam’s arm and huffed as Sam’s fingers began to smooth over his fur, though his eyes were still closed.

His eyes were closed more than they were open these days. It had been a week since their appointment with Doctor Jacobsen, and Sam was failing fast. The independence he had fought his whole life for was sapped from him, and he needed help with the simplest things, like using the bathroom, though that was less of an issue these days. Amelia had explained to a horrified Dean that basic human needs were going to be less of a problem as Sam’s body shut down.

Sam grimaced and reached for the small box beside him on the bed. His finger searched for the small, red button.

“Okay, Sammy,” Dean said softly, crossing the room and pressing the button for him. “I got it.”

The day after they’d met with Doctor Jacobsen, they’d moved to Amelia’s and Sam had been set up with a pump to deliver his painkillers. It sent a steady stream into him but when that was not enough, Sam could have a bonus shot. Dean had worried at first that Sam would use it too much and overdose, but Amelia had assured him that it was impossible. There were safeguards in place. Besides, Sam didn’t use it much. He fought against the pain as much as he could before using the drugs. Dean would prefer he use it more. He didn’t want his brother to be in pain.

“Thanks, Dean,” Sam breathed as his eyes opened.

“You wanna sit?”

Sam nodded. “Please.”

Dean eased him upright and shifted the pillows around to support him. Sam smiled his thanks and Dean sat on the edge of the bed.

“How’re you doing?”

It was stupid question. There mere fact that Sam had needed the boost of meds before he even had his eyes open was sign enough that it was a brutal day, but Dean didn’t know what else to say.

Sam leaned his head back against the pillow, as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it upright anymore. “I’m okay.” He looked down at the dog beside him and smiled. “Hey, Riot.”

The dogs ears pricked up and he looked up at Sam with his tongue lolling out and his tail thumping the bedclothes.

“You know what I’d like,” Sam said, apropos of nothing.

Dean leaned forward. “Yeah?” Sam had been beyond requests for more than ice chips and meds for a while now, and Dean had floundered in his attempts to help. If there was something Sam wanted or needed now, Dean was going to deliver.

Sam shifted slightly on the bed. “I’d like to see the stars.”

Dean’s ready smile faded as nostalgia swept over him. They had spent countless nights parked up in the middle of nowhere, watching the stars, not speaking for hours at a time. They hadn’t done it since he’d got out of Purgatory.

Sam caught his eye. “Can we, Dean?”

There was something about his expression, the childlike innocence of it, that stole any resistance Dean might have had. There was so little time left and so much not done. If this was what Sam wanted, it was what he would have.

Dean ran a hand through his hair. “Sure, Sammy. We can do that.”

Sam beamed at him and raised a shaking hand to push back the bedclothes.

“Hold on,” Dean said quickly. “I need to get stuff ready for you first. Besides,the stars aren’t even out yet.”

Sam looked out the window and smiled sheepishly. “Guess I lost track of time again.”

“No worries. Let me just get a chair and stuff set up for you and we can sit out till the stars appear. Unless you’d rather sleep a little more first.”

Dean hoped Sam didn’t say he wanted to sleep. He had missed most of the day already, and Dean had a sick fear every time Sam went to sleep that it would be the last time he did. He had to resist the urge to wake him every time he closed his eyes.

“I’m good,” Sam said, combing his fingers through Riot’s fur. “I don’t want to sleep yet.”

Dean grinned. “Give me a sec and I’ll have it ready for you. I’ve just got to go out to the car for a minute. You be okay?”

Sam nodded. “Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”

Was he aware of just how much that statement tore at Dean’s heart? The problem was that he was going somewhere, and soon, and there wasn’t a damn thing Dean could do about it.

Dean left through the front door and made a beeline for the Impala where he had parked it outside of the garage. He hadn’t driven it since they arrived at Amelia’s house. If there was ever something they needed from town, Amelia fetched it. More powerful than Dean’s fear that Sam would die at all was the fear that he would die without Dean being there. He needed to be with his brother when it happened.

He found what he was looking for in the trunk: an old green blanket. It had been John Winchester’s back in the day, and it had always been kept in the Impala. When Sam was a kid, it had covered him while he slept on the backseat while Dean rode up front with his father. Amelia probably had nicer blankets, warmer and softer, but this was what Dean wanted for his brother. A piece of home.

Sam eyes were closed when Dean got back to the bedroom, and he paused in the doorway with the blanket held across his chest. Of course it was too much to hope for, for Sam to be able to hang on long enough for them to get outside to see the stars. He should have known, but it had been such a nice idea, that they could have shared that time together once more.

“You wore him out,” he scolded the dog softly, and set the blanket on the end of the bed, resigning himself to watching Sam for hours in silence again.

Then Sam opened his eyes and spoke softly. “Not sleeping. Just resting my eyes.”

Dean chuckled. “Remember Old Lady Saggit”

Sam grinned. “How could I forget. The woman never slept.”

Dean nodded. She had been one of many babysitters they’d had over the years, but the one thing that stuck out about her was her ability to go from snoring to wide awake in seconds, whenever Sam or Dean thought about doing something she wouldn’t like—such as turning the TV from cartoons to late night movies. She always came up with the same explanation for her wakefulness. “I’m not sleeping, boys. I’m just resting my eyes.”

Sam sank a little deeper into the pillows, as if he didn’t have the energy to hold himself up anymore, but he was smiling widely.

Dean opened the door to the yard and tugged the Adirondack chair toward the door. Sam adamantly refused to the use the wheelchair Doctor Jacobsen had delivered to Amelia’s, even though he clearly needed it.

When he got inside, Sam had thrown back the blankets and was slowly easing himself round to sit on the edge of the bed. Dean wanted to help, he hated seeing Sam struggle, but there was so little Sam could do for himself now that Dean wanted to let him do what he could, only intervening if Sam asked.

Sam was only wearing a tank and sweats, so Dean fetched a hoodie from the duffel in the closet and handed it to him. Sam put it on with effort and tucked his meds pump into the pouch pocket, then he looked expectantly at Dean. “We good?”

“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean said, gripping his hands and pulling him to his feet, “we’re good.”

Walking slowly and leaning heavily on Dean, Sam made his way out to the deck and sank gratefully into the chair with a groan.

“You need another shot?” Dean asked.

Sam shook his head, his eyes squeezed shut. “No. I just need a minute. It’ll be okay.”

Riot padded outside and lied down beside Sam’s chair with a grumble.

Dean wasn’t someone that humanized animals, but if he was, he would have interpreted Riot huff of breath as a reprimand at what they were doing. Not that he would have cared either way. This was what Sam wanted, so this was what was going to happen.

Dean laid the blanket over Sam’s knees and tucked it into his sides. He pulled his own chair up beside Sam’s and perched on the edge, ready to leap into action if Sam needed him. “You okay?” he asked.

Sam drew a deep breath of the fresh air and nodded. “Better. It’s good to be outside, you know?”

Dean understood. He had been cooped up inside almost as long as Sam, and the air felt good against him skin.

Seeing Sam was settled, he sat back further in his chair and leaned his head back. “We haven’t done this in a long time,” he said.

“Hasn’t been the right time,” Sam replied.

Dean heard more meaning in that than he was willing to admit, but he pretended ignorance even to himself. If they didn’t talk about it, kept things light, it was okay.

They didn’t speak for a while, and Dean was sure Sam was falling asleep with his head resting back, but then he plucked at the blanket with one thin-fingered hand and smiled. “Haven’t seen this in forever.”

“Well, you got big, Sammy. I figured you were too old for me to be wrapping you in blankets when you fell asleep in the car. If you missed it, you only had to ask. I’d have tucked you in and everything.”

Sam huffed a weak laugh. “Jerk. I was just saying. It’s nice to have some things of home around.”

Dean wondered how it felt to be Sam, having no memory of a real home. The closest thing they had was Bobby’s place, and though the older hunter had done everything to make them welcome, it wasn’t the same. Before that there had been his apartment in Palo Alto and that had burned down. In fact, now he thought about it, all Sam’s homes apart from this house had burned down, and he didn’t think Sam really thought of Amelia’s place as home.

“Sam! Dean!” the voice came from in the bedroom and Dean recognized the strident tone at once as Amelia.

“We’re out here,” he called back.

Amelia appeared on the threshold and she looked from Sam to Dean and back again with her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”

“Stargazing,” Sam said.

Amelia looked up at the dusky sky. “There are no stars.”

Dean rolled his eyes and Sam laughed. “We’re waiting for them, Amelia. It’s a Winchester thing.”

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being Bobby-level-pissed, Amelia ranked at least a twenty. “You shouldn’t be out here, Sam,” she scolded. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

Sam took a deep breath. “Dean, you mind giving us a few minutes?”

Dean did mind. He minded a lot. But he figured he owed Amelia since she’d given them a comfortable home for now, so he set down his beer and got to his feet. “I’ll be within calling distance,” he said, making his way back into the bedroom.

He was tempted to hang around in the bedroom and listen to what Sam was saying to her, but she slid the door closed, so he quickly straightened the bedding and made his way into the kitchen. His stomach gurgled and he realized he couldn’t remember eating since Amelia had given him a granola bar and coffee that morning. Granola bars were on par with salad in Dean’s eyes, so he’d eaten enough to stave off his hunger and then tossed it into the trash can. Now he was hungry, and he had a short time—however long Sam gave Amelia—to get something to eat.

He had made and eaten a sandwich and was washing it down with another beer when he heard the sobs coming from the lounge. His heart in his throat, he raced through the hall and bedroom and out onto the deck, sure he was going to see his worst fear realized and cursing Amelia for taking him away from his brother when he needed him. But Sam was awake, staring out at the yard. He looked up at Dean as he paused, panting, in the doorway, and Dean saw his eyes were wet.

“You okay?” he asked.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. Is Amelia?”

Dean shrugged, unconcerned. “Dunno. You want me to go see?”

Sam shook his head. “Probably better to give her a little time.”

Dark was falling fast now, and the shadows were deepening over the yard. Dean sat down beside Sam and looked across, trying to see past the shadowed eyes and hollow cheeks to see what Sam was thinking. He looked tense, and it was more than the pain that was doing it.

“What happened?” he asked.

Sam sighed. “Amelia is better prepared than any of us for this, but she’s not handling it as well as I’d thought she would. I had to lay down the facts, and well, you can figure out the rest.”

Dean shuddered. “Do I need to hear the facts too?”

Sam tilted his head to the side. “I don’t know, do you?”

Dean shrugged and looked down at his feet. “Dunno.”

He heard a groan and turned to see Sam pushing himself up in his chair a little straighter. His hand disappeared into his pocket and Dean figured he was tapping the button for an extra dose.

“There’s things we need to talk about,” he said. “Things we need to plan.”

“No, Sam,” Dean said quietly. “Not yet. I’m not…”

Sam smiled sympathetically. “You’re never going to be ready for this, Dean. But we need to talk about it. I need to be able to let go knowing you’re going to do the right thing.”

Dean closed his eyes, marshaling control of himself. “Okay. What do I need to do?”

“It’s what I don’t want you doing that matters,” Sam said. “You have to let me go this time. I don’t want you making deals with demons or angels or Death this time. Please, Dean, promise me.”

Dean didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to lose his last, best comfort.

“It’s what I need, Dean,” Sam said softly. “I need this to be the end. I need to be allowed to let go. I’m so tired.”

Dean felt tears welling in his eyes and he turned away from Sam so he could let them fall. “Okay,” he said in a broken voice. “I’ll let you go. I won’t make deals.”

He didn’t see it, but he heard Sam’s exhale of relief. “Thank you, Dean.”

“And after?” Dean asked, hating that he needed to have this conversation. “What do you want me to do then.”

“For me, I want to be salted and burned. I don’t want to come back like Bobby. I don’t want to go vengeful. I want peace. For you, I want you to be happy Dean. I thought I knew what that meant once, when I told you to go to Lisa, but I don’t know anymore. If closing the gates is what it takes for you to be happy, do that. If not… Just find what you want and cling to it.”

Dean wiped at his face and then turned back to Sam. “Okay. I’ll do that.” He knew it was a lie though. He couldn’t find what made him happy. With Sam gone, there would be no more happy for him. He would keep hunting, saving people, and he would wait for the hunt that would end it all. That was his happy-ever-after now, dying.

Sam reached out a shaking hand and laid it on the arm of Dean’s chair. “Thank you, Dean. For everything.”

There was raw, unveiled gratitude in his voice, and that was what stole Dean’s resolve. He needed to be alone so he could release the stranglehold he had over his emotions.

He got to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t be too long. The stars will be here soon.”

Dean nodded vaguely as he made his way into the house. He could hear Amelia in the lounge, still crying, and he knew he couldn’t face her grief as well as his own. He went outside and let himself in behind the wheel of the Impala. He didn’t put the keys in the ignition, he couldn’t leave, he needed to be close, but he needed some privacy to let go.

He folded his arms over the steering wheel and rested his head on his arms. Tears began to fall in earnest and he gave into it, letting them come and release some of the terrible pain he felt.


	11. Chapter 11

Sam was asleep.

No, that was too gentle a word; Sam was unconscious. He had fallen asleep before Dean had got back to him after his emotional—and he now realized, selfish—outburst in the Impala, and he’d never woken up again.

When Dean had got back to him, Sam had been slouching in his chair with his chin resting on his chest. Dean hadn’t had the heart to wake him, so he’d just sat down beside him and stared up at the stars, waiting for Sam to wake in his own time. But he hadn’t. He’d slipped into oblivion and Dean hadn’t been there to say goodbye.

Dean held out hope that Sam would wake again, at least once, and he would have the chance to say all the things he had thought were beyond him. He’d never been emotionally verbose, but if given the chance now, he would say all the things he thought but never said. All the things he realized Sam should hear before the end.

Amelia said it was possible he would wake, something called the surge, but she said it was probably better for him if he didn’t. According to her, it was better for Sam to be unconscious as it gave him some reprieve from the pain. She didn’t know Sam though. Dean did. Unconscious or not, Sam was still hurting. It was the smallest signs: the slight tension in his brow, the occasional uneven breath, the pallor of the skin. Dean recognized all those things as Sam’s tells for pain, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it other than pummel the boost button on the pump and hope that it helped Sam somehow.

xXx

Dean wasn’t stupid or in denial. He knew what was happening, and he knew he was as ready as he would ever be for it to happen, but when Sam’s breath hitched too long one afternoon, Dean realized he would never be ready to lose Sam.

They were alone in the room, because Dean was cleaning Sam up with a washcloth and warm water, but as soon as Sam’s breathing stuttered and stopped, Dean bellowed Amelia’s name.

She came running into the room, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. “What is it?”

“Sammy,” Dean said. “He’s not breathing. Call an ambulance.”

Then an amazing thing happened, Sam drew a deep heaving breath. Dean’s eyes snapped to his brother. His lips had parted and he was breathing, but the sound was wrong. It was rattling, and the space between each inhale was too long.

Thanking God for the reprieve, Dean reached for his cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Amelia asked.

“I’m calling an ambulance,” Dean said in the tone of someone explaining something very simple to someone very stupid.

“Dean,” Amelia said sadly. “What do you think a doctor will do for him now?”

“Um… help him!”

Sam took another heaving breath and then paused for a beat of five seconds before exhaling.

“No, they will hurt him. They will connect him to a ventilator that will breathe for him, but they won’t help.”

“But he can’t breathe!”

Amelia shook her head. “I know. This is how it happens, Dean. It’s called Cheyne Stokes breathing. Sam is…” She wiped a hand over her face. “He’s going now.”

“No!” Dean gasped. “He’s not. It’s not time. He needs a little longer.”

Sam’s breathing hitched again, making Dean feel sickened, and though he was talking to Amelia, he couldn’t look at her. All his attention was on the man lying on the bed.

“It’s not time.”

“It is,” Amelia said softly. “This is Sam’s body letting go. We can’t intervene. Sam made his wishes clear when he filled out his advanced directive. He doesn’t want machines keeping him alive. You know this, Dean. You helped him.”

Dean remembered. _‘Allow me to die as gently as possible.’_ The words coming from his brother’s mouth that day had been awful, but Dean had never really considered the reality of them. He was going to have to watch as his brother slipped away, and there was nothing he could do because Sam didn’t want it.

“It’s what Sam wants,” Amelia said. “We have to follow his wishes.”

Dean closed his eyes and a tear slipped down his cheek. “I can’t do this.”

“You can. You will. Remember, this is _for_ Sam. He told me you’ve done some amazing things for him before. This is the last thing you can give him. Help him go.”

Dean shook his head mutely and another tear slipped down his cheek.

“Why don’t you take a minute,” Amelia suggested. “Get some fresh air. I’ll sit with him.”

Dean didn’t want to leave Sam, but he couldn’t bear to be there either. Sam was going and though he’d sworn to himself that he would be there when it happened, he was afraid now. More afraid than he had ever been in his life.

He got to leaden feet and slid open the glass door that led to the yard. He would be able to see Sam from there and hear him, but if he positioned himself right, he would be out of Amelia’s view, so he could have a moment of peace.

He positioned himself on the chair, the same chair he had sat on with Sam at his side what felt like a lifetime ago, and covered his face with his hands.

He could hear Sam’s slow, fractured breathing and Amelia’s voice murmuring to him, but he couldn’t make out the words.

He didn’t want to be alone. He wanted someone with him, someone he loved to tell him it was all going to be okay and that he could handle this. But there was no one left. His parents were long since gone. Bobby was dead. Sam was dying. And Castiel was trapped. But… maybe that wasn’t the end…

“Castiel,” he said hesitantly. “Man, I don’t know if you can hear this where you are, but I figure you should know, even if you can’t do anything about it.” And that was right. Sam was Castiel’s friend, too. He should know what was happening. He had earned that right. “Sam’s sick. No, Sam’s dying. Look, Cas, I know I let you down, letting go like that, but I need you now. Sam needs you. Get to that portal, fight your way back to us, ‘cause we need you, man. Sam needs you. I need you. I can’t do this alone. Please.” His voice broke. “Help me.” He bowed his head and his shoulders shook as he sobbed. He couldn’t bear this pain. He felt like his insides were on fire and his mind was reeling away from it. He needed someone to tether him. Someone else to be strong for a moment. “We’re in Kermit, Texas. If you can hear me, if you can get out, please come—“

“I am here, Dean.”

Dean leapt to his feet, his heart pounding in his throat. “Cas?”

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was Castiel, in his trenchcoat with his tie askew. It was really him.

“Am I going crazy?” he asked.

Castiel didn’t answer. He was peering through the door to Sam, and his forehead was creased with sadness. “Oh, Sam.”

He walked through the door and Dean heard Amelia’s squawk of surprise, but he didn’t care about her. He raced in after Castiel in time to see him roughly shove Amelia aside and sit on the bed beside Sam. He reached out a hand and laid it on Sam’s fitfully moving chest.

There was a split-second in which Dean could maybe have intervened, but he didn’t. He wanted this so much it overwhelmed him. In that moment, he didn’t think about the promise he had made Sam, he just watched as their guardian angel moved his hand from Sam’s chest to his temple. Amelia was shouting, demanding to know more, and at some point Dean must have stopped her because he was gripping her arm and holding her back from getting to Sam. Dean watched in awe as bright light emanated from Castiel’s palm and then he stepped away.

“It is done,” he said mildly.

“What did you do to him?” Amelia shouted.

Castiel turned to her, a look of irritation on his face. “I saved him.”

Dean released her, and she hurried across the room to Sam’s side. Dean couldn’t move. He was afraid this was all a dream and if he moved, he would shatter it. But it seemed real. Sam’s steady breaths seemed real. His rising color and the shadows disappearing from his eyes seemed real, too.

“Cas,” Dean said gently. “Is he okay?”

Castiel nodded. “He will wake soon. His body just needs a little time to adjust. Perhaps it would be better if the crying woman wasn’t here when he did. Shall I take her away?”

Dean smiled and shook his head. “It’s her house.”

Castiel nodded and gripped Amelia’s arm. “Then let us take advantage of her yard.”

He tugged Amelia out onto the back deck. Dean heard him say, “It’s better they are alone for a moment,” before the door clicked closed.

Sam hadn’t moved other than to breathe, and Dean was afraid to approach him in case the spell Castiel cast broke. Then Sam’s eyes flickered and Dean lurched forward in long strides and fell to sit on the bed beside Sam as his eyes opened and he looked around the room.

“Dean?” he whispered.

“Yeah, Sammy, I’m here,” Dean said in a choked voice. He couldn’t believe it was real, that he was hearing Sam’s voice.

Sam looked at him and there was fury in his eyes. “What did you do?”

Dean shook his head and a solitary tear escaped his eye and slipped down his cheek. Sam was angry, and that was fine, because he was alive to feel that emotion. Sam could throw anything he had at Dean and he would accept it all, because it meant he was really there.

Sam lived.

xXx

Amelia’s yard was vast, and Sam was throwing a tennis ball across the grass and laughing as Riot caught it in his mouth and returned it to Sam with the dog equivalent of a grin.

Dean was standing, leaning on the railing and Amelia was at his side. Castiel had gone for now, but he would be returning soon as they were due to leave Amelia’s house. He said he preferred to travel with the Winchesters to stop them becoming lost from him again.

Castiel had returned months ago. By Dean’s calculations, a couple weeks after Sam had finally told Dean about the cancer. He had searched the country for Sam and Dean, but found no sign. He had taken to searching down hunts he thought they would take in hopes of running into them. It hadn’t worked, but Castiel had saved a lot of people in the process. It wasn’t until Dean prayed to him that Castiel had been able to lock on his location, and he had come to them. He had come and saved Sam.

“Are you ever going to explain to me what happened?” Amelia asked, breaking into Dean’s thoughts.

He looked out at Sam, gamboling on the grass with Riot at his heels, barking madly. “What does Sam say?”

“He won’t tell me,” she said. “He thinks I’m better off not knowing.”

Dean turned away from his brother and looked her in the eye. He had no love for Amelia, but he accepted that he owed her for everything she had done for him and Sam. “If I was to explain what happened, told you everything about the world you live in, it would hurt you. It’s better that you keeping living in a world that makes you happy rather than one that scares you. Believe me, I never had the choice. Your life is better.”

Amelia sighed. “But he’s okay, right? Sam, I mean. He’s not going to get sick again?”

Dean shrugged. “We don’t know for sure. It might come back later. But as long as we’ve got Cas, Sam’ll make out fine.”

“Sam said you need to leave.”

“Yeah, we do. There’s things we need to take care of.”

“And you won’t come back.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Sam tell you that too?”

“He didn’t need to. I can tell. You won’t come back this time.”

“We might. I’m not making any promises. That’s down to Sam.”

She bowed her head. “It’ll never be the same though, will it?”

Dean shook his head. “I know you love my brother, but you need to understand what our lives are like. We don’t get the happily-ever-after. You have a husband. You have a life. Make the most of it, Amelia. Make the most of it. Without Sam.”

He didn’t turn look to see if his words had any impact. He doubted they would. Miracle or no, Sam would always be the one that got away from her.

He whistled and both Riot and Sam turned to face him.

“We’ve got to get going, Sammy.”

Sam nodded and ambled up the stairs to the deck.

“I’ll wait in the car,” he said.

Sam smiled and laid an arm around Amelia’s shoulders. “I’ll be right out.“

Dean turned away hurrying through the room that had been Sam’s death chamber, and out to the Impala. Castiel was waiting there, standing beside the car.

“Where is Sam?” he asked.

“Talking to Amelia. Saying…” Dean shrugged. “Thanks, goodbye, probably both. I don’t know.”

Castiel nodded thoughtfully. “It is a better goodbye, though, this way.”

Dean couldn’t agree more. He had come to this house under a haze of grief and he was leaving it light with happiness. There was plenty to come, Kevin was translating the tablet, and soon they would have a way to close Hell for good. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he wouldn’t be alone now. He had Sam _and_ Castiel at his side.

Life was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… I know some of you are going to be relieved that Sam lived and others will be disappointed that he did. I wanted to make this as accurate portrayal of Sam’s illness as possible, and my initial intention was for Sam to die, but when I came to the end, I realized I was in a unique position writing fanfic. In this fanfic world, there are miracles. Angels can come and save the day.   
> I just wish the real world was like that.


End file.
